


Gone Grey

by thortasha



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms, Thortasha - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:25:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thortasha/pseuds/thortasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha and Thor attempt to hide their own painful pasts, and have complicated results where both logic and emotions have blurred together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ache

_Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers; I do not reap any benefit from this story. All characters are credited to Stan Lee and Marvel._

* * *

"…and so," Tony said, his champagne glass pushed high towards the ceiling of his manor, Pepper gracefully standing behind him wearing that sideways crooked grin she wore so well. He'd been thanking people for about twenty minutes, namely himself, for Stark's latest scientific achievement that almost no one could remember or think of how to phrase. It was one of those accomplishments that didn't roll off of the tongue, but one that people held onto because they'd never be known for helping the scientific community again. "Here's to our achievement…"

Tony wasn't even saying it, the specific name. He hadn't uttered the phrase all night, and instead maybe mentioned it once or twice to someone who gave a damn or could pretend to care so they could feel special and important. But it was an accomplishment, again, that would never stick in the brain. The cows who wanted to gobble it up mindlessly couldn't spit it back out the second they turned to brag. And it was disgusting, it was pointless, especially to Natasha, who hung back with the people who couldn't find anything Stark and his scientists worth a second glance. Clint in particular was Natasha's choice to loiter by. He just kept a dead stare at Stark, his mouth twitching every so often out of habit or…a need to say something. It was hard to decipher. Natasha couldn't tell anyway. She was just staring through Pepper and Tony as he droned on through some reasons this was important to the scientific community.

She sighed, keeping her eyes on Tony as she mumbled to Clint. "I don't know why we all had to come."

She could almost hear him swallow a laugh as he kept his mouth stationed in a casual frown. He turned his head to the side, glancing at the crowd around them with the mismatched Avengers scattered throughout. Bruce seemed to be comprehending what was going on, which wasn't a surprise. He smiled, nodding in Tony's direction as he raised his glance in agreement to whatever Stark had added on. Steve seemed to be confused as to what was being said but appeared to be struggling through it, as if it was almost too much for him to swallow but he kept taking bites of what Stark was throwing out there.

Natasha turned her head the other way, looking for something to capture her attention the way the rest of the guests had captured Clint's. There was a gentle murmur of laughter throughout the crowd as Tony let a name drop, probably his own, or made some snarky remark about some scientist's lack of contributions. And her eyes fell upon Thor. He stuck out in the room, not only because he was the largest but just his presence. It didn't match.

Thor seemed the most out of place there, his eyes searching over every crevice of the room for some sense of normalcy or familiarity. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail, he was wearing some tuxedo Tony had paid for. He didn't belong there, and he felt it. And part of him didn't want to be there either. This world wasn't for him, this part of the world anyway. Not Tony's world.

And Natasha could empathize. This wasn't her world either. Maybe it had been once, in passing as she went through the motions as her past self, but even then it wasn't hers. It never really had been. Thor tugged at his cufflinks, she felt a bitter pang of understanding before she swallowed it down and turned back to Clint, who now was looking in her direction.

He shrugged at her. "Guess…because we're friends?"

"Are we though?" she mumbled into her champagne glass as she took a tiny drink. She and Stark might have had a few words, a mutual respect when it came down to it, but she wouldn't consider him a friend. He didn't know her or much of her inner workings. He knew what the world knew. And he could guess she was tough to get to know.

But that was as far as it got. And Natasha didn't consider that friendship. She considered that an acquaintance at best, someone she could have as company is she desired it, but not more than that. The only real friend she had was Clint.

There was a round of applause and Tony stepped down from the staircase, pulling Natasha from her thoughts. She turned back to Clint, who already was making his rounds to avoid any direct conversation with the crowd of smiling people, all politely mumbling about Tony or the achievement, though none offered a more specific phrase than 'this is truly revolutionary'. Natasha sighed into her champagne glass, feeling like a chameleon as she smiled at those who looked in her direction, offering a quiet hello in place of a real interaction, letting them glide past her like a shadow.

She turned back to Thor, who seemed to be avoiding all contact aside from a couple of gawky and appreciative stares from some older women as they walked past. No one could speak to him. They knew nothing about him. They figured he didn't understand and they didn't want to make him feel stupid, some might have said more stupid. That wouldn't be polite.

It was evident on their sympathetic faces and their hushed tones as they turned to each other and nodded in pity. Natasha could only stand there and grit her teeth under a closed lip smile as she read them all like books, knowing every judgmental and incorrect thought as it rushed through their minds second naturedly. She glanced at Thor again, who didn't even seem phased by their pity and their observing him. Instead he'd taken a seat on one of Stark's armchairs, staring down at his cufflinks, though he seemed to be lost in thought.

And Natasha wondered why. It wasn't her business, but she wondered what he was thinking about, what made him stare into his cufflinks, through them, through the ground and into the core of the earth. His gaze was intimate, hurt, but eons away. And no one who passed by seemed to notice, no one who passed by knew him at all. They probably thought he always did that, troubled with some past burden from his distant galaxy or something. They romanticized him, made him to be a tragic hero.

Natasha wasn't like that. She didn't find his brooding romantic, or tragic. She found it odd, out of place. Thor seemed to have an optimism about him at all times, a heroic nature that never seemed to die no matter how hard others made it for him to continue to live that way. And Natasha rarely saw him brood, rarely saw him in his own world. And she saw nothing good coming of it; when one only has time and their thoughts, the results are disastrous. One needed to separate themselves from their past.

You couldn't brood. You couldn't get caught up on yourself. It didn't matter.

She walked over to him, her long black dress gliding along the floor as she moved silently over, like a ghost. He didn't notice her until she was feet away from him. He turned his head up, his blue eyes settling on her almost apologetically, as if he was sorry she'd caught him having time for himself.

"Hey," she said, her emotionless voice gentler than usual, his inner pain now fractured, shattered and hard for her to shy away from. He was hurt, he was aching.

She didn't want to see it. "What's up?"

"It is nothing of importance to you," he said softly, straightening out his jacket as he stood up, towering over her as he tried to hide what was so evident. "It is a personal trouble, nothing more."

"You sure?" she asked again, her voice distant as she watched him move, trying to process what could have happened. She didn't want to know, but she couldn't help but ask.

"It is most kind of you to inquire, Natasha," he said, a weak effort of a smile on his face. "But it is a problem that you cannot help with. It is an ordeal with my brother…" he trailed off, his eyes moving from Natasha to above her, watching nothing as if it were a scene playing over and over again in his mind.

Natasha's brow furrowed as she ran through possible reasons Loki would be troubling him, the most obvious that he was planning something else, that he was coming back with another army, a bigger army. He was angrier, more hurt, he wanted more damage. She looked up at Thor. "What's happening? What is he doing—"

Thor read the worry and concern on her face and immediately attempted to soothe her fears while simultaneously attempting to defend his brother's honor. "Loki's actions towards Earth will not be repeated, I can assure you. He acted irrationally, but you needn't have an army formed against him."

"You can't fight him alone," Natasha countered, eyeing him with concerned agitation. Yeah, he was his brother, but he also tried to destroy the world with an army. Thor wasn't apt to fight them all off on his own. "It's not smart…"

"This is none of your concern," he said quietly, his tone attempting to hide his pain, his deep rooted pain he would not unveil to Natasha. He turned his head for a moment, looking back at her, almost bursting at the seams with emotion and hurt. He needed some release, but he wouldn't give himself one. "There is no battle for you to fight, I promise. This is nothing more than a mixture of regret, concerm…and distance."

Natasha nodded, not one to push boundaries and make someone confess how they felt. She was good at building walls and was good at breaking them down. But she also…she also knew what it was like, to have your own secrets. To want to keep your pain to yourself because you're scared no one would understand. She assumed that was why Thor kept that pain to himself.

She shrugged, her champagne glass glittering in the dimly lit room. She was one for hiding and repressing, for denying and keeping pain away from visibility as much as possible. And alcohol was usually a pretty good way to do that. And not champagne either, heavy alcohol was. Bad alcohol you could get for cheap and was so strong it might blind you.

They both needed an out, an escape from everything. And this was it. She looked at him, calmly addressing him with complete assurance in what she said. "Let's get a drink."

* * *

Thor didn't need much convincing. They slid out of the party and into her car, where they happened upon some bar on some street no one cared about, no one wrote songs about. It was dark, not too crowded, nothing more than a location for artsy kids that had money to spend and really nothing to prove. But the liquor was hard, it was cheap, it was a good place to just lose yourself and your pain. Natasha had only been here twice, and both times were to drown out fits of pain and rage that bubbled over and frothed like the sea in her mind.

She knew a good table in the back, in the darker part of the bar. She sat facing the door, and Thor facing her, each of them with their own glass of something. She watched him drink down whatever it was sitting in his glass like glue like it was nothing, pouring it back like he had no time left in this miserable world.

She'd been silent long enough, watching him. His pain pricked her, it drew her blood and her interest. "Where is he?" she asked stoically.

"Where is who?" Thor asked her, resting his fist on the table and leaning towards her.

"Loki."

He tensed. "That is none of your conc—"

"Bullshit," she said, taking her mug of gin by the handle and taking a long hard swig. She plopped the glass down, raising her brow and watching him inquisitively, waiting and watching him like he was her prey, waiting to see what he'd give away.

Thor looked at her drink then at her, almost impressed. "You can hold your drinks well for a woman your size."

She shrugged coolly, brushing the compliment off. "I'm Russian. It's in my blood."

He nodded slowly, a crooked smile playing on the corner of his mouth as he leaned a little inward. Thor pushed a sigh out, looking her direct in the eyes. "My burdens are not yours to bear."

"The well being of earth is a burden we can all share," she replied coolly, keeping his stare. "And if your brother is threatening that, and you're trying to protect him, now would be a good time to give that up."

He laughed slightly, shaking his head and sitting back in his seat. "Loki's interests no longer lie on destroying Earth," he said, his eyes downcast on the table as his smile wavered. "He only meant to injure me with his plans, and to prove something to our father…and now our father is holding him as a prisoner."

"He's making the right call," Natasha defended. "Your brother went on a genocide. He's not right."

"Loki acted recklessly and selfishly, and what he did was truly horrendous," Thor agreed, pulling himself from the dimmed, warm light that hung above them, sitting back in his seat. "But I do believe he can be redeemed. Our father will not give him that chance, I know that."

"Not everyone deserves that chance," she mumbled, taking another drink from her glass.

"Our father was willing to give me another chance," Thor countered, looking towards her. "I was once as reckless as Loki. I planned to wipe out planets and gain power through fear. Loki only was living up to my poor example. If anything, it's my fault—"

"Everyone can make their own choices," she said quickly, cutting him off from another defense of Loki. "You changed. So could he."

"It's not that simple for him," Thor bargained again for his brother, leaning again into the light. "You must understand, I do not condone what he's done. And he needs to be punished, but my father will never grant him a second chance. His fate is sealed, no matter how he changes."

She was silent, staring into her drink.

Thor watched her, waiting but she never spoke. "One should never be denied a chance to change," he continued, his broken voice he feared was falling on deaf ears, her eyes now lost in the drink in front of her. "You must underst—"

"I do," she cut him off breathlessly, her own world crumbling around her as she thought of Clint, as she thought of how he spared her life, how he gave her that chance. She whipped her head up, catching Thor's gaze. "I do…understand."

He could tell he hurt her, a swarm of guilt and sheepish apologies swarmed his heart and mind. "I-I'm sorry. I did not mean to offend you, Natasha."

She took a drink of her gin, watching him. "There's nothing here to offend," she breathed, past memories and feelings and instances slapping her eyes and brains like wild waves at the sea. Her mind was a storm, and she couldn't remember what to feel or what to say.

She just needed somewhere else to hide, something else to occupy her mind and just get rid of her…

"What would you do," she breathed, not knowing what she meant or where she was going with what she was saying. But she needed more, more to drown herself in, more to hide and bend and contort until she could build a house, a sanctuary for herself away from her past, her ghosts that reared their ugly heads.

"What are you asking," he inquired after a moment, finishing his drink as he watched her move, watched her fingers as they traced the top of the glass delicately, daintily. He thought of Jane for a moment, wondering where she was. He saw her only yesterday, and he couldn't remember what they'd even discussed.

It was something about her work, something about how overwhelmed she felt with it. Something like that.

She glanced at him. "You're in pain," she said simply, looking at him as she felt her breathing get heavier. "What would you do…to hide your pain?"

He took a moment, his thoughts of Jane fading as he looked at Natasha. There was something raw, aching about their whole interaction. It didn't make sense, it wasn't anything but just emotion and hurt. And she ripped his hurt from him, the pain he masterfully had made a second thought for years, since he was young.

It was all their, as was hers. And all they could do was sit there in agony and just twitch and try to deny what was evident. They were all nothing but need, nothing but confusion and need that was ignored too long and repressed and now was just searching for solace. And the solace came from the other's pain, from the other's loneliness and need to be heard.

But no one knew what to say; no one knew how to alleviate the pain and the strife and the years of tortured anguish that had been swallowed and compressed. And instead they just sat there, desperate to find something to keep, to hide in, to hurt in.

And all they had was each other, each other in an otherwise silent and empty, dark bar—world, that would never understand. That would never care. And all they could do was hurt, hide, and try to fix the other's pain through nothing more than giving the other a body to hide in for awhile.

It started out simple enough; there was a kiss that neither one of them could admit to initiating. And it wasn't even real, it was a gnashing and desperate attempt to suffice for the pain they now had exposed. He pulled her closer and she'd held on tightly, trying to make it enough. They both attempted to house the other's pain, take on their burden as they kissed, knotting their fingers in their hair and pulling at clothing and trying to touch every inch of flesh to make them feel less alone.

But it wasn't enough for them to hide in; they needed more. They needed to hide.

It wasn't logical, it wasn't right. Thoughts of Clint and Jane blurred together in a sea of pain as they found themselves sandwiched in the back of her car, just trying to find solace as they scratched and bit and fucked. It wasn't love making, it wasn't for pleasure. It was nothing more nor nothing less than fucking.

It was hard and it was painful, but it let them hide. It let them brood and bleed without putting bandages on to hide it.

And soon it was over. They were nothing more than sweaty rejects who couldn't look each other in the eyes as they buttoned shirts and pushed their hair back from their faces. There was nothing to talk about, there were wounds now they wouldn't open up.

She fumbled with her keys, jamming them into the ignition and driving him to Jane's. The ride was silent, awkward as the two just tried to understand what happened, tried to think of lies to cover up why they did it.

But there were none. And when they pulled up to Jane's, he looked at her for a long moment, waiting for her to speak. But she never did, she kept her eyes ahead of her.

And then he got out; he got out and walked into the house and then she headed for home.

He wouldn't say anything, she knew that. It meant as little to him as it did to her. It was just…it was what it was, and no more. And she would forget about it soon enough. She'd had sex for worse before, and she'd managed to hide those times safely within the vaults of her memory.

This wasn't anything more. She'd forget about it soon enough.


	2. Better

_Author's Note: Despite what this chapter promises, more Thortasha feels and such are on the way. Enjoy!_

* * *

Natasha twisted her mouth in a yawn, kicking her feet up onto her desk as she let her eyes fall closed, her thoughts dying down to a gentle hum. She was still decked out in a pair of black dress pants and a low cut silk shirt from an interrogation earlier; she'd needed to find the whereabouts of the leading minds behind an incredibly successful drug cartel. Her heels were tucked away under her desk, little spots of blood trickled along the six inch heels.

It had taken twenty minutes. She'd left them a bloodied mess. They'd left her with a mere welt on her cheek. She twisted her mouth, pushing her tongue against the inside of her right cheek, a dull ache panging again on the side of her face. The brunt of the pain had come with the impact of the punch, but still she'd need to remember to put ice on it.

But for now she'd found sanctuary within the walls of SHIELD headquarters, the necessary information tucked away safely in her brain to divulge to Fury later for when he demanded it. Her apartment was ways away, and she had not felt like driving home after the whole thing. She was tired, more so than she normally was. She attributed it to a stressful few weeks of burying herself in work and cases, going on mission after mission and allowing herself enough time to sleep and eat a meal.

Ever since her encounter with the god of thunder a month ago, Natasha had delved into assignments to just hide how she felt, who she was. She hadn't been as social as she normally was, which wasn't all that much, and instead stayed focused on the tasks at hand, volunteering for assignments and just busying herself with tasks and work and not thinking about what they'd done, about how she felt about herself and viewed herself, about what agony she was in at a constant—

She hated thinking. Thinking was a time only meant for you to either come up with lies about yourself or obsess over something until it became a huge problem, for her anyway. Other people might have used thinking for good, but not her. She couldn't do that, no matter how she tried. And when she thought, she thought about things too much; a simple act of impulse became another reason she was a horrible person. An inadvertent thought became a life mission, and there didn't seem any logic in letting yourself buy into it. She didn't like thinking, festering, obsessing, whatever you wanted to call it—

"Get out," she barked to whoever had opened the door, her eyes not even bothering to open. Her ears detected the soft, calm footsteps, the quiet but otherwise careless opening of the door. Whoever was there didn't mean harm, only to visit. She folded her arms and adjusted herself into the chair. "I'm working."

"You okay?" she heard a familiar voice ask. Her eyes snapped open and took in the familiar form of Clint, looming in the doorway. His brow was arched as he stared her down, pushing himself from the doorframe and walking over to her. She kept a silent and steady gaze with him, watching him sit on the edge of her desk and shrug slightly.

"I mean, I haven't seen you around in the past few days," he offered her, watching her lower her feet and look down at the ground. Clint was the last person she wanted to see right then; he was her only friend and someone who knew her well. She didn't want to be understood or sympathized with, she wanted to hide. And Clint wouldn't let her do that.

Besides…every time she saw him, she felt a pang of guilt about what had happened with Thor just weeks ago. It hadn't meant anything, and she'd done worse on missions. They weren't even really dating, or anything. They were just friends. They both seemed to be okay with that too. Just friends, that was it. And she didn't want more, or she'd convinced herself she didn't anyway. There was no benefit to it, not with Clint. Both of them led dangerous lives, lives that could call for them to be on the opposite corner of the world at the drop of a hat. Their lives together would be nothing but dinners going cold and missed calls.

She shouldn't feel guilty. It was stupid—though she knew it had been awhile since he shacked up himself.

When she didn't respond, he continued. "You know I'm not going to make you tell me anything, Nat."

Then shut up, she thought scathingly, looking through her desk at the piles of papers stored inside.

"I'm just worried about you is all."

She looked at him, her nonchalance masking her bubbling emotions well. She shrugged, her mouth contorted into a sympathetic distaste for what he said. "Barton, there's no need for us to delve into any of this right now. We're at work."

"No one's working," he said with a small laugh as he watched her slide into her shoes. "I mean, you just seemed unnaturally stressed."

She looked at him, ready for the verbal smack down but crumbled as she saw him looking at her. He really was her friend, and she couldn't deny it or hide it. It wasn't something she could use for her convenience. And he really did care about her.

She smiled weakly. "It's…just personal stuff kicking my ass."

He nodded, keeping his calm as she actually discussed what was bothering her. "Anything I can help with?"

Doubting Clint ever having slept with a demi-god, and too tired to divulge much detail or reason to why she was hiding, Natasha shrugged and slumped into her chair. "It's seriously nothing but my issue, Clint. You don't need to worry about me."

"I do too," he said, gently taking hold of her chin and turning her head slightly to better investigate the welt on her cheek she had otherwise forgotten about. "That's what we do, we have each other's backs in this crazy house."

She flinched, not at his touch but at his words. Right now, she didn't want his concern or his worry, not when she was this raw, still healing from the other night. She couldn't be there for him right now without crumbling completely, so why the hell should he be for her? She was a broken, messed up little girl who needed time to herself to rebuild her walls.

She needed to lay bricks by herself, not have Clint try to break them down.

She turned back to him, her eyes flickering as she clicked her tongue. "Of course," she said with her distant smile. "Who else could we count on?"

He wanted to say more, she could tell by the way his jaw muscle clenched. But that was the beautiful thing about Clint, he understood. And he didn't want to leave her, but he would. She mumbled something about being tired and how she needed to head home before brushing by him and out of the office.

She sighed shakily the second she stepped into the hallway. She needed less people in her life; how could she hide with all these people pecking at her all the time?

* * *

The drive home was painless, a blur of lights and sounds that seemed to whir by and before she knew it, she'd found herself in her elevator as it passed the fourth floor and made it to the eighth. She hadn't been thinking about anything, just trying to get to the sanctuary of her home where she could hide within the safety of her four walls from everyone. But there was the echo, the echo of the thoughts she kept so well hidden in blackness. Like a constant throbbing headache, they always threatened to become so much more, so much…worse. But she tried, she tried to swallow them.

She threw herself into her apartment, speedily shutting and locking the door behind her, as if her own demons could be stopped and instead would resort to clawing and whimpering at her door. She let her keys fall to the floor, taking off her brown suede jacket and letting it fall after them. She sighed, closing her eyes as a feeling of exhaustion settled over her again.

She was thinking too much about…thinking about these things. Now she was physically paying for it; that had to be the reason she was so tired. Her natural process of working and repressing and denying wasn't helping this situation, but she knew better than to talk about it. Then she'd be exposed as nothing but the lost bundle of nerves sh—

She needed to build herself back up from the nothing she'd become. Natasha could convince herself anything was trivial, that nothing mattered but her job, but the importance of her mission to save and help. She could do it; she was good at that.

First, there was Clint, trying to dig down at her deeper issues. She'd told him what she could, and that wasn't even that much. He knew of her past, but not of everything. He knew she was hurt, and he partially knew why. But no one knew the whole thing. No one but she and she alone would be able to recount all the horrors that filled her past. And Clint respected that, he understood. They had each other for as much as they could bear to unveil, and even then, it wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough either, but both of them just accepted it. Both of them just could lick the others' wounds, but they couldn't heal them. They didn't want to put the other through that pain of confrontation.

And Thor…Thor hadn't even known her, or she thought he hadn't. And yet he could look at her and know exactly what she was feeling. And it was different than with Clint. Thor didn't see her walls, he didn't notice them. He didn't want to get to the bottom of her or alleviate her pain, he just recognized the similarity. And he had destroyed her, with a simple act of attempting to bond over their shared pain, their shared need to be heard no matter how much they ignored it.

Thor was one of the only people who could truly see her for what she was and acknowledge it, and he didn't even know what the purpose of commercials on television. He was much more perceptive than people gave him credit for; he was more in tune with people than she'd believed upon first impression and the very few and impersonal interactions she had with him on different and stressful occasions.

And she didn't know how the hell he could do that.

She walked over to her freezer, reaching for an ice pack to place on her cheek, though she could feel the swelling had already gone down tremendously. Natasha wondered what else was picking at Thor that he needed a release like that, with her. It wasn't her place, and she didn't want to think about it, but something about him drew it out of her. Something about him captivated her interest unlike anyone else. He was hurting more than he'd ever let on, and she respected it. She admired it. She only wished she could be that strong, to hide your pain that well.

She tried, but people like Clint always could tell when she was trying to hide. They could always tell there was more to the interior of Natasha then she was revealing.

And that needed to stop.

But the point of it all was neither one of them could get further, especially the god of thunder. They'd know what she wanted them to and understand they couldn't get further than that, and they'd have to both just let it go. She wasn't someone who wanted to build her relationships or reputations on her pain. She didn't want to be empathized with…it was nice sometimes, but at the same time it wasn't anything she wanted used. Thor and Clint noticing her pain was one thing, trying to explore it would only lead to pain of their own. And she wouldn't allow that.

The walls were being built again, quickly and rapidly.

She'd shut them out, not because she had to but because it made sense. Them delving deeper would lead them to question their own morals, it would lead to them inevitably pitying her.

And she wouldn't be pitied. She could grow on her own and hide on her own. She didn't need their help.

The walls were sturdy, nice and strong and could keep even the demigod out.

She poured herself a cup of hot tea, watching as the steam caught the circulated air in her apartment and soon faded to nothing. Her exhaustion was pushing at her eyelids, and for a brief second she was worried at to why she was so tired.

It had just been a busy week; she credited it to that. She didn't get sick often, and her immune system had treated her beautifully the past twenty-eight years. She doubted it had given up on her now.

But her exhaustion would fade with time, she'd be back to normal by tomorrow. She'd get over the exhaustion because she was safe inside her walls.

No one was breaking through. Everything within the walls was cemented, protected, weren't going anywhere.


	3. Consequence

Natasha's life was swinging back into normal.

Clint had officially backed off. It had taken another week of quiet answers and abundant indifference on her part, but he'd eventually realized whatever was bothering her was something she wasn't willing to overcome by talking about it, at least not with him. And he just stared after her in yearning sadness as she ignored him, ignored everyone. Her rare comment on various situations had even become more sparing as she silently sauntered down the halls of SHIELD, barking the specifics at Fury about one case before he handed her the next. And then she was out the door again, out to fight another battle. She did more than hide in her work now, it became her life. It became her focus throughout the day and what she thought about at night. She let it consume her completely.

And Clint said nothing, silently allowing her to work herself tirelessly, to lose all sense of personal attachment and just be alone. Because that was what she wanted, what she needed to function. She didn't need him and his emotional empathy or his understanding mumbles. She needed to be what she was programmed to be; a killing machine with a set of communication skills that allowed her to acquire whatever information from whoever she wanted and whenever she wanted to.

She didn't have time to be bogged down with personal troubles, with time to realize what a fragmented little girl she actually was. She also didn't have the patience for it; dealing with her issues was a can of worms that really was no one else's business and that she didn't want even as her own business. The less time she spent on the issues, the better. They just became smaller and smaller until they could again be placed on the back burner of her brain.

And it was easy when no one was hounding you on it. Clint had abandoned the quest with the utmost reluctance. Everyone could tell something was up, but that she didn't want to talk about it. So no one asked. No one bothered her about it at all…

…Except Thor. And the worst of it was, he never even meant to bother her about her pain, serve as a constant reminder of who she was versus who she presented to the world. As the weeks passed, they'd been silent with each other, not saying much more than a courtesy hello or obligatory small talk, but it was getting more and more strained. There was a tension brewing between them, adding another unnecessary pain and hurt to their already flooding hearts. They needed another release, but what would that do?

They would just become more tense, they'd hurt worse. They'd keep trying to use each other, hide in each other until even that lost it's worth. Until they could see all the pain within each other but have nowhere to hold it; all they'd be is broken, useless shells of who they once were, what they once were.

All they did was cause each other more pain. She didn't want that, didn't need that. She could hide her pain on her own, she didn't need to bring him into it. Just like he didn't want her to hurt on his behalf. It wasn't smart and it wasn't right.

And as easy as it would have been to deny the tension, to pretend it wasn't there, it simultaneously would have been too difficult. Ignoring it meant it grew, meant it strengthened, and they'd become nothing but security blankets.

Natasha didn't want a security blanket. She could keep herself safe.

She didn't need him. And he needed to know that, she needed to say it. Then after that, they could lick their wounds and retreat back to their corners. It's what needed to be done.

Natasha had managed to find him in SHIELD; he was by himself, which didn't surprise her. It looked like he was dozing, tired from thinking and dwelling on his pain. He was sitting on the ground of some abandoned meeting room or something. She wondered if anyone had passed it, had looked in on it and seen the demigod and then just ignored him. No one wanted to step on his toes; they all thought he was unpredictable.

Maybe he was, but it didn't bother Natasha. There was something about his unpredictability she understood, she could figure out. She understood where his actions stemmed from; she could empathize with him.

To come from a place of pain was all too familiar for Natasha. She felt a pang of regret as she loomed in the doorway. She shouldn't have come in there. She shouldn't have tried to find him.

She didn't want to bother him; she didn't want to ask anything of him, afraid of what doors their interaction might open, what he might tell her.

What it might force her to tell, what bloody mess it would leave her.

"Thor," she said sternly, watching his giant form come back to reality, his blue eyes settling on her as she entered the room, leaning on the doorframe. He looked tired; moreso than usual. There was something shadowing the rest of his features she didn't want to address. She didn't want to know him.

But she couldn't help it, the words pricked at her tongue so forcefully there was no way she could stop herself. She'd just hide the words under her mask of indifference she wore so well.

She remained stoic, arching a brow as she looked at him coldly. "You all right?"

He smiled sheepishly, tiredly. "Yes, quite," he said distantly, looking at her. "Did you need to discuss something with me?"

"Why are you hiding in here?" she asked again, her mask faltering as she looked at him. He didn't want her attention, he didn't want to talk about his pain. Sometimes people blew off their pain only to push others to ask further, Natasha knew some of those people.

But the look on his face, he was like her. He was guarded. He didn't want to hurt someone else with his own strife.

"Why are you here?" he continued. "I assume everything is peaceful as of right now?"

She wandered into the room, taking cautious steps, wary of her surroundings, of what had happened last time they were together like this, open and vulnerable. She should have left him the first time, she regretted coming in here now. Now, it was all tense. She couldn't remember why she even thought this would be a good idea.

Her skin itched. The wounds she sewed shut herself were now tearing at the seams. She found something all too familiar about the ripping flesh, the exposure. She should have left; she felt her leg muscles jerk like she should have run but her brain made her stay still, keep her eyes locked as she breathed steadily.

"We need to talk," she said calmly, standing across from him, her face expressionless. She didn't want to be his escape, she didn't want to need him to be hers.

"That night was a mistake," he mumbled, his voice dry and light, but the words heavy, hurting, sincere. If she hadn't seen his lips part for the words, she would have been convinced she imagined them. He continued, watching her with his strained eyes. "And I'm sorry if it has caused any more stress in your life—"

"Nope," she lied, completely solemn so it could pass off as truth. "I'm sure that your life hasn't seen much change either."

"I've spoken to the lady Jane about it," he admitted, glancing in her direction as she sat down across from him. "She no longer wishes to have anything to do with me; I cannot say I blame her."

Natasha was silent for a moment, attempting to maintain her mask of indifference. "Sorry."

"It was for the best," he said with a weak smile, looking towards the window at the end of the room. She waited for him to continue, to explain why it was for the best, why he was glad their relationship had ended. But he didn't for that was his pain to bear. He'd given her enough, she didn't deserve to be burdened with more.

No one did. Thor's pain was all due to his own actions and stupidity, due to his past failures with those he held dearest. Losing Jane was only too easy to add to his list, but it was his fault. No one else should have to suffer the burden of his wrongdoings.

Not since Loki had been the one to answer for Thor's behavior; it was Thor's fault he'd snapped in the first place. If he'd just been a better brother, if he could have just convinced Loki that he did care, that father cared…if he hadn't been such a horrid example.

Thor would be damned if someone else was to pay for his past actions; Natasha did not deserve to be weighed down with those memories. No one did.

They were his punishment, and he would see them through alone.

"Are you tired?" he asked quietly, catching Natasha's attention. She then realized her eyes were closed, her body slumped against the wall behind her. She was embarrassed, concerned slightly. When had she become so tired? She was sleeping at home, though not much. She usually could get by on anywhere between six to three hours. Except for now; now nothing was enough.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said quietly, racing through the potential reasons behind her sudden case of what she could only define as narcolepsy. Her eyes must have shown her worry, and he was not one to deny when someone else needed aid.

"You haven't been yourself…well, in the short time I've known you," he said, watching her shakily push herself up. She didn't have time for him, his interrogation. She was worried now; she was panicked about what was in her system.

It couldn't be just stress, it didn't make sense. She'd been through hell and back before and bounced back stronger than ever. She'd hidden for weeks, pushed herself into work and nothing had worked. She was tired, always so damn tired.

She didn't want him, Thor knew that. She didn't want his help or his concern, he'd seen her push that Barton fellow away before, he expected he'd be treated no differently. But he couldn't help but to try. "Natasha, I only wish—"

She finally managed to stand up, though her body was tense and her mind was racing. She felt queasy, a gurgling feeling in the bottom of her stomach, pushing against her flesh. "Stop," she said aloud, though whether it was to Thor or to her stomach, she wasn't sure.

"You need assistance," he said as if it was obvious, pushing himself up to aid her if she accepted it. She certainly seemed…out of sorts, from what he had gathered about normal human behavior. "You're not well."

"I'm fine," she spat, pushing away from him, from the room. "Just..leave me alone."

"Natasha," he called after her, but she'd already left. She heard his words but they were meaningless to her. There was little he could do to alleviate her pain.

She was pushing herself down the hall, the uneasiness in her stomach getting worse with every determined step she took. It was all too much and it made her nervous, she was slowly losing control of her life, of her actions. Everything she'd been programmed to be was falling apart and she was slowly becoming nothing.

She fell into the nearest ladies room and immediately got sick.

Natasha sat in the stall for a few minutes after, sitting there, trying to regain her breath and think about what could have been in her system. She had no allergies that she could think of, her diet hadn't changed at all. She was working harder and sleeping less, but even so…it didn't make sense. The only thing out of her daily routine was sleeping with Thor…

And suddenly a new concern clouded her brain; the exhaustion, the illness…it couldn't be. It couldn't be true.

"No," she breathed. "Oh…God, no."


	4. Priority

Natasha felt her jaw clench, her eye twitch. She didn't know how to feel about the little plus sign that was now staring her in the face.

It was her third pregnancy test. It was the third one that had confirmed she was pregnant. With a bit of unnecessary scorn, she tossed it in the waste bin and stormed out of her bathroom

 _Fuck_ , she thought to herself as she slammed the door shut behind her, the wood slab shivering.

She couldn't believe this.

Her entire body was tense, ready to spasm and lash out at the slightest provocation. Her life was falling apart in front of her; everything she had planned, worked for. The person she had shaped herself into through relentless denial and manipulation of her emotions now seemed to be gone, lost as just another fraction of her past. She was new, reborn and in need of guidance, structure.

For the first time, Natasha was presented with something she wasn't prepared for, a situation that she hadn't manipulated. She felt her stomach churn and she looked down at her belly, still so trim and toned, built for the person she was. A strong core.

And soon the skin would be stretched, pushed forward and round as it housed the child. She wondered how long it would last, the pregnancy. Surely there would be some difference between being pregnant with a demigod's child as opposed to being pregnant with just another human's child.

Maybe it was faster; maybe she was already a few months along. Or maybe it was slower—maybe she'd have that baby bump for years. She never paid much attention to mythology; it seemed to her to be nothing more than humans misunderstanding another being.

For a split second she thought back on the night of the party, how those people had looked at Thor with complete misunderstanding, and he was sitting in the room with them.

Were there even any myths about gods and humans having children? She didn't care much for stories and legends, she didn't know a lot about them.

Reality was her calling. Her job was her focus. And people were her puppets.

Or they'd used to be; how would people respond to her, and her ever growing stomach? She inhaled shakily, running her fingertips over the skin on her belly.

There was a world of change brewing beneath her thin layer of skin, none of which she wanted.

She'd need new clothes; she'd need to shop and dress differently. People would make her sit down more often, cooing at her and coddling her, trying to take care of every last thing in her life as they told her she needed them.

She felt her throat tighten with rage at the thought of being treated like an invalid, being looked at with that grieving yet mocking glance people gave Thor. They would pity her, they would look at her as a victim.

Everyone would; it was in people's nature to pity what they didn't understand.

How would Tony view her now, no matter how many jokes he cracked about it? What would be lying behind his eyes? And how would Steve view her? Or Bruce?

She felt her heart tighten, as if it was being ripped from her chest.

How would Clint treat her?

He would never look at her the same way; he would never forgive Thor. Clint would try to take care of her while distancing himself at the same time. He was hurt, he'd take it on himself that this had happened to her. He'd find some way to bear the burden of the whole thing, saying he should have stayed with her or he should have gone with them. He'd pull away more than ever, torturing himself with his own inner monologue, becoming indirectly more reckless with his actions.

She couldn't tell him.

Natasha had to push him out, keep him away from it until it was gone. It would save him the stress, it would save them both the agony of losing each other.

She'd have to find a way.

For a brief moment, she thought of the obvious answer, abortion. It would be simple enough, probably a practical decision. And no one would ever have to know; not Thor, not Stark, not Clint.

She'd still have her life; everything would be the same for her. On the outside, at least.

On the inside, everything would be...different.

No matter how well she could hide it, life wouldn't be the same after that.

She continued to think of other options.

She could go on a long assignment somewhere; she could talk to Fury about…she couldn't tell Fury either. The minute she told him she was pregnant, he'd either keep her busy with menial tasks and paperwork or he wouldn't give her any work to do.

But he'd at least reprimand her for her responsibilities. Fury and she might not have always seen eye to eye, but he'd never treat her any differently, no matter the circumstance.

Still, there had to be some way for her to work a situation so she could go away for nine months or so, but never explain why she needed to go.

No one would ever have to know; no one would ever have to…

…except Thor.

She had to tell him. It was his child after all, he had a right to know it existed. What would he do about it, how would he respond? He had his responsibilities on Asgard, his brother, his friends…would she have to drop everything and go there with him?

Natasha wouldn't do that. And she didn't expect Thor would demand that of her, but they both needed to figure something out.

And quickly.

She didn't know when she was going to have the kid, it could have been in two weeks, two years, or nine months. It would make sense if a demigod's child grew faster in the womb, but the uncertainty of it made Natasha anxious.

They needed to talk, he needed to know.

She sighed in resolution, running a hand through her hair and slowly sliding down the door until she was crouched on the ground. She'd tell him tomorrow; just find somewhere they could go on their own and she would just...tell him the facts.

Then tell him she was leaving on assignment, go to Europe and hide in hostel for how long it took, then they could decide what to do.

Her head fell back against the door in annoyed surrender, her heart heavy with ache.

This was too much to bear; telling Thor, being pregnant, potentially losing Clint, losing herself. One night shouldn't have haunted her like this; one act of selfishness had reshaped her entire life and future. Natasha was one who enjoyed plans, structure. She found no joy in surprises and taking things as they came.

She wanted to know what she was going to do with this baby now.

Natasha twitched in agitation, sighing as she relaxed against the door for a fraction of a moment. She pushed herself off of the ground. She needed to talk to Thor.

* * *

The elevator doors slid open and Natasha's stomach tightened, instantly regretting her decision. She didn't even look like herself—in her mad dash to get to SHIELD headquarters, she hadn't changed out of her sweatpants or long sleeved t-shirt. It was a casual look she often avoided, aspiring to usually look her best and be as efficient as possible.

She couldn't dwell on it though; she just hoped the people still at work would not question her drastic wardrobe change. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, quickly stepping off the elevator and attempting to identify Thor as quickly as possible and get out of there.

They could go out to dinner or something, just not be in SHIELD, just not run into a familiar face, someone who would question what she was wearing, or why she was there so late.

Only as she ran from room to room, she discovered Thor wasn't anywhere to be found. From the few nights she'd stayed late, she was sure she had seen Thor wandering about, asking various SHIELD employees what some little gadget was, how it worked.

Sometimes he would just ask them about their day. Yet tonight there wasn't a trace of him.

Her heart fell; perhaps he had returned to Asgard already.

She was wandering quickly back down the halls, hoping to see the demigod just hanging about somewhere, laughing with some computer technician or something.

But it was silent, and dark in most of the offices. The only light came from the science lab off to the side. Natasha sighed, staring longingly at the dimly lit room. Either Stark or Banner was in there, they were the only two who truly lived in the science lab. And she doubted Thor was in there with them—their meticulous handling of everything in there seemed to agitate the god of thunder the one time he'd entered the lab.

But…maybe they at least knew where he was. Natasha, from her position, couldn't tell which one of them was in the room, but she hoped it was Bruce. She wouldn't need to explain much to him.

It was likely to be Bruce; he liked to hide away in there without interruption, especially from Tony. She hoped it was.

Oh, did she hope it was Bruce.

She shoved open the door to the lab, beginning to talk the moment her foot stepped onto the tiled floor. "Hey, Bruce," she sighed. "Listen, have you seen…"

Her eyes settled on Tony, hidden behind a projection of what looked like another suit design with some new modification. But he wasn't looking at that anymore.

He was now glancing over Natasha's bizarrely disheveled appearance.

"I-I thought…Banner would be here," she said weakly, her jaw clenched as she tried to force the words out.

"Nope. Just me in here," Tony said, giving her ragged pants one more once over before turning back to his suit's blue print and closing it down. "Did you need Banner in particular for something?" he asked casually, wandering around to the front of the table.

"No," she said simply, folding her arms across her chest, structuring her face into one of indifference. "I just thought—"

"I mean, you have to have needed something," Tony cut in, waving a pen in her direction over her outfit of choice. "To be seen in…now, what would you call that style?"

She forced a smirk. "Funny."

"Not trying to say," he said in that mocking tone, scratching his nose and shrugging. "You look…bad—"

"I don't have time for chit chat," Natasha spat out bluntly, ending this nightmare. "I need to know where Thor is."

Tony looked a tad surprised at the mention of Thor's name. He had to admit it was a little…shocking, to say the least. Thor wasn't a gold mine of information on anything short of mythology and his brother, Tony thought to himself, his mind racing with reasons Natasha would need to talk to Thor.

After a moment, he'd drawn a blank. The visit had to be personal.

"And why is that?" he asked, again his tone hinting at the sarcasm beneath his feigned concern. "Couldn't be about how you two were cozying up at my last shindig?"

If Natasha hadn't been so used to hiding how she felt, she would have blushed. Her mouth twisted slightly and she shrugged. "I need to find him for classified reasons," she said indifferently.

"Is-is that what you kids are calling it nowadays?"

"Stark, if you don't believe me," she said calmly, almost light enough to be joking, but never sincere enough for others to tell. "You can take it up with Fury."

Tony glanced at her; he wasn't buying it.

Natasha kept up the façade. Blinking slowly, she sighed, leaning against the doorframe. "Now where is Thor?"

Tony clicked his tongue in his mouth. Natasha was a liar, and Tony knew that, but he wasn't going to push it tonight.

Not when he could stir the pot and make things incidentally come to light on their own. Tony stood silent for a moment, pretending to think back on where Thor had gone while instead actually trying to remember his girlfriend's name.

Tony looked at his shoes, pinching his eyes closed, holding the bridge of his nose, mumbling locations aloud while inside he tried to match a name to a face.

_Shorter, talks a lot, really…kind of agitating, brilliant…starts with a J…_

He suddenly raised his eyes back up to hers, meeting her gaze with a small smile, a twinkle of mischievous joy echoing in his stare.

"I do believe," he said, intentionally slowly as a smirk grew on his face. "That he's paid a visit to Jane Foster."

He would be with his ex-girlfriend when Natasha had to deliver news of pregnancy. It only seemed to fit in with her recent streak of terrible luck.

"Great," she sighed.

Just her luck.


	5. Rational

There was a steady rain falling as Natasha remained parked outside of Jane's trailer.

She'd gotten there over twenty minutes ago, remembering the route from when she'd dropped Thor off those many nights ago.

Natasha watched the trailer through her rain stained car windows, wondering what exactly Jane knew about the whole night she and Thor had slept together.

Did Jane know it was her? Did Thor make it out to be more than it was?

She wished she could just get Thor alone; Natasha didn't stomach others' emotions well. And Jane, being a bitter ex-girlfriend, seemed to present a bigger problem to Natasha than actually telling Thor about her pregnancy.

How was Natasha supposed to get Thor out of there without Jane popping up? Natasha didn't know Jane well enough to make a true judgment, but after observing her interactions with Thor and others around her, Natasha had concluded Jane had a mild tendency to be needy.

Natasha had encountered Jane twice in her life, both times incredibly brief, and neither of which Natasha would describe as particularly memorable.

She remembered once had been at another one of Tony's frivolous galas. Natasha had overheard Jane complaining to Thor about something that was not only completely trivial, but something Thor really hadn't understood. And Thor's continuous misunderstandings only annoyed Jane further as she proceeded to haughtily whine another explanation.

The other time had been at SHIELD. Jane was providing research and Natasha overheard her talking about her accomplishments with other scientists, arguing with one of them about the legitimacy of some type of research.

Natasha gathered Jane was not a person she would easily befriend, but overall seemed tolerable enough.

The rain had let up slightly, and Natasha's focus was again on the house in front of her.

Natasha watched the trailer for another moment before pulling the keys out of the ignition. The sooner she got past Jane, the sooner she could tell Thor about the baby.

And the sooner she could make up some bullshit excuse and get out of the country.

Natasha pushed herself from the car, walking briskly across the street and knocking on the front door.

No one answered at first; the trailer seemed silent. Natasha felt her whole body tense as she realized the possibility that no one might be home.

They could be out to a nice dinner, out for a walk. They could be making up and get home and see her outside, standing there.

What if they were in there now, reconciling and merrymaking and all that? She grimaced in annoyance; of course they'd be hooking up right now. She swallowed, her gut telling her to turn around—

"Can I help you?" Jane asked as she pulled open the door. Natasha felt her heart freeze for a second, pumping cold blood through her veins. She glanced at Jane, who looked slightly worse for wear, staring at Natasha as if she was trying to figure out why her face seemed so familiar.

Natasha looked mildly taken aback at her incredibly disheveled appearance, noting how it looked like Jane had just woken up from a long nap.

"Is…Thor here?" she asked quickly, though not as business-like and emotionless as she would have liked.

Natasha saw Jane tense at the mention of his name. "No," she replied, her words tinted with a threatening undertone as her gaze on Natasha turned from one of confusion to paranoid agitation. "Who may I say is asking for him?"

Jane wanted a fight, it was obvious. She saw Natasha as the woman who came up and broke up the happy home shared by Jane and Thor.

And while Natasha should have remained stoic in order to pacify the situation, something about Jane Foster made her want to egg her on.

Natasha irked a brow, shrugging casually as she looked at her. "That's classified," she replied calmly.

Jane rolled her eyes. "You have got to be kidding me," she said, already irked with Natasha's presence. "Why did you even come here looking for him?"

"Classified," Natasha repeated coolly.

Jane flinched, she was becoming indignant.

Natasha was mildly satisfied with herself.

"You…seriously," Jane mumbled, rubbing her forehead as she looked at Natasha. "He's not here."

"Do you know where he is?" she asked.

"No! I don't know where he is," Jane shouted, pushing her door open a little further as if to emphasize the loneliness within her dwelling to Natasha, as if to prove to Natasha she 'won' her man.

Jane forced a laugh, rolling her eyes in an attempt to hide her defeat. "He's not here," she spat out at Natasha, running a hand through her ponytail. Her face was then shadowed with a sadness, a longing as her tone softened. "He hasn't been here for awhile…"

Natasha looked past Jane and into the trailer. It was a mess—dishes weren't done, Jane's clothes were on the sofa—she was not entertaining company.

Thor hadn't been there for some time.

And in all likelihood, Stark knew that. He'd only sent her there to make a mess out of nothing. She felt her blood boil as she thought of him, laughing away in the safety of his lab, so proud of himself for stirring up drama for him to watch unfold.

She'd make him pay for it later.

"I'm sorry to have troubled you," she replied, looking at Jane as she resumed her stoic approach, swallowing down her fury at Stark. "So you have no idea where Thor is?"

"No, no I have no idea where Thor is," she hissed at Natasha, taking a step back into her trailer. "Now, if you'll excuse me…"

She slammed the trailer door shut in Natasha's face.

Natasha closed her eyes. She couldn't wait to get a hold of Stark.

She dove back into her car, jamming the keys into the ignition and putting the car into drive. She sped down the road, trying to think of where Thor could even be.

He could be at Erik's house, he seemed to be on friendly terms with Thor. None of the other Avengers would house him.

Maybe Steve would, but that was in a desperate situation.

There was also the chance Thor had returned to Asgard, which Natasha hoped was not the case. She had already wasted enough time and energy driving around that night, and if he wasn't even on Earth, she would be incredibly annoyed

She pulled off to the side of the road, turning on her phone and quickly looking through SHIELD's personnel files until she came upon Erik's temporary address in New York.

She put the car back into drive, preparing herself for a potentially dissatisfying second trip. She hoped he'd be with Erik, or something. She needed to tell him now so she could plan out what to do later. It was worth a shot to at least check.

* * *

Thor had been at Erik's, thankfully. He was mildly surprised to see Natasha, and Erik seemed more than happy to get rid of Thor for awhile. He seemed to be knee deep in work, technical and intricate work that the god of thunder was clearly interfering with.

"Why don't you take him out somewhere, eh?" Erik had said absently over his shoulder, bent over some contraption on his table, ignoring both Thor and Natasha as means to make them want to leave.

Thor clearly looked like he'd grown tired of Erik's lack of company and seemed eager at the chance to leave.

And Natasha was glad as well with Erik's complete indifference. It was nice to not even have to bullshit Erik about why she needed Thor; he genuinely didn't care.

Once they'd gotten in the car, Natasha turned to him with a mildly frustrated glower.

"Do you know how impossible you are to get a hold of?" she demanded as he shut the door behind him.

"My apologies," he said, glancing at her. "Is everything all right?"

No. "Yeah," she spat out, peeling down the road.

He kept looking at her, his gaze becoming somewhat questioning. "Do you need my assistance for something?"

Sort of. "Not…really. You—you just need a phone or something," she said with a sigh, making a sharp right onto the main road.

He was mildly perplexed; why reprimand him for being difficult to find if she didn't even need him? She was a rather difficult one to read, but Thor didn't want to argue with her.

She seemed agitated. His absence clearly had caused her something of a difficult time.

"I do offer my sincerest apologies," he said again. Natasha nodded, and that was the end of it.

Natasha tried to think of somewhere she could take him. A diner seemed like her best bet for now; Thor could eat there at least, and she could tell him the news in an otherwise calm and neutral area.

There was one around the corner she knew of; the food was decent enough. And it was close.

She just wanted to tell him.

They arrived at the dimly lit restaurant, choosing a booth off to the side. No one was in there except for a few lone souls, all leaning over the bar and drinking their coffee, mumbling about the latest baseball trades.

Their meal was relatively silent; Natasha only wanted to talk about one thing with him and had no time for pleasantries.

However, she was having difficulties bringing herself to address the issue.

It wasn't until almost everything had been cleared from the table, aside from her half-filled cup of tea, that Natasha looked up at him. He was focused on something occurring outside.

"Thor?" she asked quietly, leaning in slightly as she tried to catch his attention.

He turned towards her, seemingly relieved she may be revealing why she needed him.

She sighed, dropping her gaze slightly as she took a soothing breath.

"I'm pregnant," she mumbled, forcing the words past her lips.

The words were out, in the open air between them. She could almost feel them, drifting aimlessly; looking for a target, an effect that it would never find, never had.

Natasha lifted her head to take in his facial expression, to read his eyes. She assumed under different circumstances, he'd smile, be joyous. It seemed to be in his personality to celebrate this occasion.

But instead he remained calm, just trying to figure out how to respond to the news in a way that would be appropriate.

Thor didn't know what to tell her. He should have seen this coming, he should have expected this would happen; he shouldn't have been so stupid. Thor's perpetual carelessness had now claimed another victim.

Now Natasha had to pay the price for his selfish actions.

He didn't even know how a mortal would bode whilst carrying a demigod's child, how her health would suffer for this.

He met her eyes with some concern, some apologetic worry that Natasha immediately wanted to subdue.

She didn't bode well with emotions. Especially not his; Natasha was too empathetic to his plight, and she didn't like it.

She didn't want to deal with it. She didn't want to be open with him.

"I'm going to keep it," she blurted out in an attempt to be soothing; instead the statement just seemed forced and out of place.

It was odd, also, because up until now she hadn't decided what she would do with the baby. Or maybe she had made the decision, just never verbalized the thought.

He nodded slightly, lowering his eyes to the table before looking back up at her, almost as lost as she was in what to do next. Neither knew what to say. Nothing could fix this, despite their best efforts to do so.

She opened her mouth to speak as he did the same.

"You don—"

"I'm sorr—"

She sighed; he ran a hand through his hair.

"You go," she mumbled, reaching down and picking her tea up off the table.

He took a moment, keeping his gaze on her. "I am sorry for…I know you didn't want this," he said, his voice soft but sincere. "But know that I will remain here for you for whatever you need."

She winced at his words and his promises, shaking her head slightly. "You don't have to do anything for me. I'm more than capable of handling this on my own."

Thor knew Natasha was strong, even stronger than she gave herself credit for. If he abandoned her with that child, he knew there was a good chance that both she and the child would be fine.

But Thor wouldn't abandon her; he couldn't in all good conscience take no responsibility for his actions. Natasha deserved better than that, she deserved help with this, no matter how much she wanted him to ignore it.

Thor would be there for her, he would make sure of that.

"Natasha," he said in a hushed tone of admiration. "You are truly one of the most capable individuals I've ever known, Asgardian and Midgardian alike. You…you could handle almost anything the world threw at you—"

She irked a brow, a worn smirk on her face. "Almost anything?"

He smiled weakly, looking at her still with the glint of admiration. He folded his arms on the table, leaning in slightly. "I only wish to support you, Natasha, and be there if you ever did need help."

He sat back in the booth slightly, unfolding his arms and resting his palm on the table. "My visits to Asgard will become less frequent the next few months in order to provide a more consistent aid for you."

"I'm trying to go on a long assignment somewhere," she said quietly. "You are more than welcome to accompany me, but do not feel inclined—"

"Why…are you going on an assignment?" he asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

"I don't want people commenting on my pregnancy," she said bluntly, the emotion in her voice carefully tucked away as she spoke to him.

"It's not safe," he began as if it was obvious. "For you or the child."

She grimaced. She knew that, but sticking it out wasn't going to be as simple as he could try and make it out to be.

"It's the logical thing to do," she snapped at him, though she tried her best to keep her agitation out of her voice. "I don't want to discuss this with you."

Thor did not argue with her, only nodded and let the subject drop. "Once the child is born—"

"It should stay with you in Asgard," she said matter-of-factly, taking a sip of her tea. It would be easier for everyone if he could just stay away, the baby could just stay away. It wasn't anything Natasha was ready for; it would just be better all around.

"Earth is not the place for a demigod, don't you think?"

"And you?" he asked, nodding towards her, genuinely wondering where she would like to go after the birth of the child.

Natasha dismissed it immediately, shaking her head as she looked at him. "My duties are on Earth, so that's where I'm going to stay. I have to."

It was the logical place to be; she had no business going with him to Asgard nor did she want to. What kind of life would await her there?

She didn't love Thor; she certainly didn't want to spend the rest of her life with him in a place she had no friends, no common ground, no purpose or use.

"Very well," Thor agreed calmly. "Then that is how it shall be."

"Affirmative," she said, dabbing her mouth with her napkin.

Nothing was truly resolved; there were no words left to say between them. They'd managed to settle on plans, but neither was happy with the result, though neither knew what they truly wanted. It was all just misunderstandings, mistakes.

They felt each other's discomfort, their hurt. She knew Thor wanted to apologize to her; he knew Natasha wished she could keep the child to herself and never have even told him of its existence.

They knew the pain the other felt, empathy coursing through their actions as they tried to hide on their own, lick their own wounds and let the other live peacefully.

Yet neither could give what was needed; they could only understand and swallow each other's pain, make it their own cross to bear.

Thor absently verbalized what was going on between them, glancing at his plate as the words came out without warning.

"You're not alone," he said softly, though Natasha couldn't tell if the words were meant to console him or her.

She leaned into the table. "Are you staying on Earth, then?"

"Until I am needed elsewhere," Thor stated openly, his voice now focused and clear.

"Who are you staying with?"

He thought for a moment, his eyes turned upward as he ran through the short list of Midgardians he knew. "…as of now, no one," he admitted. "I believe I've worn out my welcome with Erik."

She felt the words press against her throat, forming on her lips before she could utter them.

Natasha knew what was happening; she was inviting him to stay with her.

She bit down on her tongue, thinking the matter over. It wasn't the smartest decision, in fact it wasn't smart at all. She'd had one moment of weakness around Thor and now she was pregnant. Living with him only seemed to be creating unavoidable chaos for her life.

But inviting him was almost instinctive.

Natasha was better on her own, she knew that. She knew she could handle this and she shouldn't invite him to stay with her.

But at the same time, the words wouldn't go away. She felt them bubbling over, almost spilling out.

Why?

Perhaps it was her traditional understanding of family; certainly a pregnancy would be easier to maintain with someone else around, especially if she went to another country. While Natasha was certain she could function well without his constant presence, there were logical reasons for keeping him around.

She also thought that, despite her desire to push the world away, Thor understood her. It was more than just having another body around for company; Thor would be empathetic to her plight. And if she could just maintain enough control, she wouldn't fall to temptation and they could maintain a mild friendship.

She sighed, allowing her logical reasons for keeping him around become her sole reasoning for desiring his company.

If she kept things logical, it would be fine.

"You can stay with me," she stated stoically. "But you can sleep on the couch. And if you eat me out of house and home, you can sleep on the street. Do you understand?"

"You have my word," he promised.


	6. Empathetic

Natasha felt like abandoning the concept of sleep all together that night.

Despite her physical exhaustion, her mind was racing as she thought of what was going to have to happen tomorrow.

She was somehow going to have to ask Fury to go on a mission for months in an isolated location…without explaining why.

And she might also be taking Thor with her, though she couldn't think of a reason she would need him in any case. Natasha was a very competent agent; she was fluent in multiple languages and had the physical capabilities to take on the fiercest of competitors.

No, she couldn't think of a logical reason she'd need to bring Thor. Fury would probably suspect they'd just want to fuck or something.

And that reasoning wouldn't get Natasha anywhere. Not with Fury.

Besides, Fury would be wondering why she wanted to go somewhere so far away and for so long. And with no explanation on Natasha's end, he was naturally going to suspect the worst of her and her loyalties to SHIELD.

Then she'd find her sorry ass without a job.

She could always explain the situation to Fury, she thought for a moment, explain that she needed to just get away for awhile. She could still do work over there, she could still be an asset to the team—but that was a short lived theory.

Fury wouldn't ever let her work, especially overseas, with a baby inside her. Her job was to be an assassin, a cool and collected spy.

Not some pregnant chick waddling about, waving a gun around.

Natasha sighed, rolling over and burying her face into her pillow.

She was fucked.

No matter how she explained the situation, she was out of luck. Fury would have no tolerance for her bullshit. He certainly wasn't going to give her an assignment overseas with no rational logic behind the move.

And even if she did explain her pregnancy, Fury would consider her a liability out in the field. No one at SHIELD or any of her opponents would see her as a threat, as the same person. Her pregnancy only made her fragile, like she was composed of glass. She was no longer worth the risk, as long as this child was inside her.

Fury would likely just give her medical leave. Or, if she begged for work, he'd assign her research assignments.

She couldn't wait for these months to pass by. Then everything would be better.

Her child would be safe in Asgard. Thor would no longer be a constant presence in her world. She could return to work, to her normal life. Clint, Tony, none of them would ever know the wiser.

But that pleasant life was a long ways off, and she'd have to figure out how to make due until then.

She pushed herself into a sitting position, deciding that sleep was not an option for her right then. Her mind was in ten different places at once, and there was no way she could possibly lull herself to sleep. Not for awhile anyway.

Her room was quiet and dark, offering her little distraction to soothe her frazzled thought process. Through her closed bedroom door, she could hear the gentle mumblings of the television Thor must have left on after she'd taught him how to use it.

She wondered if he was asleep or not, if his torturous thoughts were keeping him awake.

Now, Natasha had no interest in exploring those stories which kept him awake. She had no desire to know Thor that personally, not in their current situation. It was a delicate matter, and she needed to treat it as meticulously and stoically as possible.

It was like a surgeon; she didn't want to know the patient as a person, she didn't want to know his history, his life, and his ideas. She only needed to know what to do to make everything as painless as possible for all parties and get him out of there as soon as possible.

Getting to know Thor as a person would only lead to chaos; feelings of empathy could be mistaken for feelings of love within their predicament. If Natasha ever delved too deeply into her emotions, that would be the end of her. She was constructed to be an emotionless spy, a lethal assassin with rationale behind her actions.

Without her emotions, she was useful. She could function.

With Clint, it was bad enough. She couldn't count the number of careless things she had done in order to protect her friend. Connecting with Thor only would bring more trouble more careless actions that would lead to her ultimate termination with SHIELD.

Natasha would become useless, pointless.

She would have to remain stoic; it was the logical thing to do.

A sudden prick of loneliness stabbed at Natasha's heart, and for a brief second she considered abandoning her reserve with him. They clearly shared a bond, an understanding. If anything, perhaps an emotional bond would make their situation more bearable, perhaps she'd even enjo—

She inhaled, immediately quashing the little bud of a thought before it could blossom. There was no future with Thor; there was no logical reasoning behind them being together.

Yes, they were similar in some regards—two lost souls who found comfort in the other, but nothing more than that. She couldn't let it become more than that.

The one night she had noted the common ground between them, they had ended up fucking in her car. She couldn't have that again.

But there was still the matter of her being unable to sleep, and the fact that her thoughts were spiraling out of control.

Talking to Thor could be a nice distraction for her, if they talked about something logical and bland, something that wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

It would just serve as a means to keep her busy enough that she wouldn't worry about tomorrow.

She pushed herself out of bed, making her way quietly down the hall into her living room, where Thor was set up to sleep. After their diner trip, they had gone back to Erik's to retrieve Thor's every day wardrobe and any possessions he'd brought to Earth.

The two bags he had of clothing he had were off in a corner, behind her side table. The only light in the room came from the television, where some sitcom was playing dully. Thor—donning sweats and a blue t-shirt, was sitting on her sofa, his eyes on television but his mind visibly elsewhere.

"Hey," she said quietly. "Can't sleep?"

He seemed surprised at her presence at this hour. "Um, no," he said, reaching for the remote control and turning down the volume. "I'm sorry if…if the noise—"

"No, it was my thinking keeping me up," she said calmly with a shrug, sitting next to him on the couch. "Nothing to apologize for."

"I was thinking as well," he said as he placed the remote back on the table, glancing at her quizzically. "What were you thinking about?"

"Everything," she replied simply. "You?"

There was a pause.

"Everything," he said coyly in reply.

She couldn't help but smirk slightly, in spite of her best efforts to keep her guard up. She nodded in the direction of the television. "But I can assume you weren't mulling over the plotline of this show, right?"

"No, not in the slightest," he admitted with a soft laugh, one of the few times Natasha had seen him be genuinely happy as of late. "One of the girls has two boys interested in escorting her to the same social event—a dance or something; the plot itself is simple enough to figure out."

Natasha attempted to keep the conversation light, pointless. "Which one is she going to take, do you think?"

Thor smiled weakly, sitting back on the couch and shrugging slightly. "I haven't given it much thought, actually."

Natasha turned her focus back to the television, bringing her knees up under her chin as she watched the girl on the television screen hysterically blabber to her friend about her woes. "I don't understand the panic over a dance."

"I assume they weren't a big deal to you," he said simply.

"School dances were not a part of my life," she replied matter-of-factly, though there was something bitterly honest in her tone. She did look back on her life with some regret, though there was little she could have done to avoid it.

Her whole life she'd been shaped into something someone else could use, denied the frivolities of youth others her age had experienced and looked back on fondly.

But she didn't mind, she'd been trained not to care about what she'd missed out on.

Most people would look upon her with pity when she revealed this bit of information to them, thinking she'd missed out on some crucial human experience.

But to Thor, it was just another frivolous social event. He didn't see her differently; she could tell that just by the way he nodded casually after she finished talking.

Her oddities didn't bother him; she was still the same person that she always was to Thor.

Natasha wished she'd never observed this character trait. She needed to deny herself that sense of familiarity with him in order to avoid any emotional strain in the future.

The less people she felt connected to, the better. Natasha wasn't built for company.

"How are you feeling?" he asked after a long moment of silence between them.

"Fine," she replied quickly, attempting to think of things to say to quash any similarities they might have had, making him more of a demigod and less of a friend.

She glanced at him, going to ask something about Asgard, about becoming king of a distant land she wouldn't ever care about or understand.

But she stopped herself. She couldn't do that to him, to anyone.

She knew what it was like to be different, to not belong. It never helped when someone verbalized those differences.

Her empathy was getting the better of her. She needed to get out of there immediately.

Another moment of silence between them. "I'm glad," he said quietly.

Natasha glanced at him, running a hand through her hair.

It wasn't smart or safe to stay on that sofa with him.

"I'm going to go to sleep," she mumbled, pushing herself off the sofa and walking back towards her room.

"Have a good night," he offered her as she wandered off down the hall.

"Thank you," she mumbled over her shoulder, shutting her bedroom door behind her with a thud and climbing immediately into her bed.

The conversation had served its purpose; she was distracted. There was no rational means behind continuing it. It was headed towards dangerous territory.

She needed to keep things simple, she reminded herself as she closed her eyes.

Simple would be the key to keeping things working efficiently.

* * *

The next thing Natasha knew, it was morning. Late morning, she figured, from the looks of how high the sun was in the sky. She slowly rolled her head to the side, looking at her alarm clock.

It was about nine-thirty, almost ten. She was running late for work after having failed to set her alarm clock the night before.

"Shit," she mumbled, though her physical movements out of bed were slow and labored. Her stomach had already begun a mild churning, and she hoped it would just pass her by and she could go through her morning without actual morning sickness.

She was tense enough already; she had to go to work and rationalize to Fury a nine month assignment in a far off destination. With Thor.

No questions asked.

She sighed and quickly went into the living room, where Thor was dead asleep on the couch, the television still playing quietly in the background.

"Morning, Thor," she said quietly, her monotone gentler than normal, attempting to wake him up, gently jostling his blanket as she spoke.

No response.

"Thor," she said, immediately switching to demanding as she shook him gently. "Up and at 'em."

Nothing.

"Thor, get up. Come on," she said, shaking him harder.

He mumbled something incoherently, but didn't wake up.

Perhaps it was the fact that she was running late, a factor that would not help her in her case with Fury, or maybe her growing queasiness, or maybe just a fresh burst of hormonal rage, but Natasha had run out of patience.

Figuring he was practically indestructible and wouldn't feel even her hardest of punches, she wrapped his hair around two of her fingers and gave it a sharp tug.

Needless to say he woke up almost instantly, though it was in far less than a stellar move.

"What?" he spat out bitterly, groggily pushing himself into a sitting position, rubbing the sore spot on his scalp once she'd released his hair.

"Get up. It's time for work," she said, trying hard not to laugh.

* * *

Their ride to work seemed endless.

Leaving about two hours after she needed to, the pair was now stuck in two hours worth of traffic. After her wake up call, Thor had managed to barely say three words to her the entire morning. They had to skip over breakfast (another thing Thor found problem with) due to the fact they were already running late. And also Natasha's morning sickness had created an aversion to any food, so she figured making breakfast wouldn't necessarily help the situation.

And now they were sitting on a backed up street, the guy on the radio blathering on about something completely irrelevant to the rest of the world. Her stomach was acting up, churning and tightening itself up, quite loudly threatening to erupt any minute.

The noises didn't escape Thor's notice. He turned and looked at her curiously, glancing at her stomach before looking up at her.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his agitation with her morning antics now replaced with concern.

"Yes," she replied simply, though she lacked conviction in her words and her eyes conveyed her anxiousness.

There was a moment of awkwardness between them as they both attempted to fix the situation, but with no knowledge of what to do. Natasha just resorted to her role as concealed weapon, shutting him out and taking care of herself.

She swallowed loudly, attempting to breathe and stay calm as she drove. "I'm fine," she said quietly.

Thor knew better. Usually one to accept her words and claims at face value, he could not hide from this one. There was too much familiarity in her attempt to shut the world out, to carry the world on her shoulders and not say a word of complaint to anyone.

There was something too recognizable about her need to push everyone away to protect someone, everyone, from herself.

He reached out tentatively, gently placing his hand on her arm meant to make her feel a little less alone, to alleviate some of her pain by knowing he understood.

Natasha felt herself tense up under his touch. It was a simple action, meant with innocent intentions, but that would only complicate their situation.

But she didn't have much time to dwell on it; she was too busy focusing on keeping her stomach calm.

"Thank you," she said quietly, the only thing she ever said on the gesture.

* * *

Once they'd actually arrived at work, Natasha's queasiness had seemed to disappear for the most part and her focus was now on how she could convince Fury to send her away for nine months on assignment.

She wondered if she should mention Thor or not to Fury. His presence could make the mission seem a touch more official, or shape the task into a more personal vacation type situation. Barton was usually the agent she liked to work with, if she had to work with any of them. Solo missions were more her style.

She decided against mentioning Thor at all. He could just join her and none of them would know the wiser.

Once they entered through SHIELD's doors, Natasha decided it would be best if both went on with their daily routines, and kept their usual distance from each other.

"So, you have things to do?" Natasha asked, curious as to what the demigod did in his trips to SHIELD.

"Yes," he said with a nod. "I can often occupy my time here; aiding with information about Asgard, annoying that Stark fellow every once and again."

"Good," she said simply, running a hand through her hair. "All right, so…we'll meet back here at six, okay?"

"Understood," he said with a slight smile. "I shall see you then."

"Great," she said simply, turning and heading up the stairs towards Fury's office. She was focused, she was ready for this. In her mind, she went over and over what exactly she would say, how she would say it.

She could probably throw something in about how she felt she was not being used to her fullest potential. A trip overseas would allow her to play to her strengths—her knowledge of foreign languages, customs in European regions.

That would aid her argument.

Perhaps she could also ment—

"Hey there," Clint called out from behind her.

She froze, whipping around and staring at Barton as he walked over to her. She must have walked right by him without noticing him.

Natasha wondered how many times he actually had said hello to her.

"Hey, Clint," she said with a slight sheepish laugh, shrugging slightly. "I didn't…didn't see you."

"You seemed distracted," he said bluntly, though he didn't delve into why she was distracted, he gave her that space. Natasha was grateful for it.

"Yeah, lots going on right now," she said with a slight smile, shrugging casually. "How are you holding up?"

"Fine, thanks," he said simply, though he seemed to want to say more.

There was silence.

"So," Natasha said, taking a backwards step towards Fury's office. "I'm going to go—"

"Did you give Thor a ride to work today?" he asked, somewhat visibly angry at himself for asking the question. He didn't want to be that guy.

Natasha tensed. "Yes," she said simply and flatly, hoping that would end the conversation and any speculation Clint was holding about the relationship between herself and the demigod.

The queasiness in her stomach was coming up again.

"Look, Nat," he said, trying to make up for his question before. "It's none of my business, but if you guys—"

"It's nothing," she spat out quickly, trying to soothe her stomach.

He smiled weakly, nodding at her statement as if he knew better. "Nat, like I said—"

"Stop," she said quickly, just trying to end the speculation in his voice. "It's nothing like that. I promise you."

He watched her closely, dropping his own personal questions and instead now seemed mildly concerned for her. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she lied unconvincingly, taking a few short breaths in an attempt to just maintain her composure, though it felt like the sickness was winning out.

"That's bullshit," he said simply, going over to help her. She backed away.

She glowered at him. "Don't. I'm fine—"

She turned her attention to another approaching figure; Tony Stark.

Natasha could feel her blood boil and her heart freeze almost simultaneously.

Tony seemed to want to say something to her, probably going to inquire about her finding Thor the night before, or to ask about her little visit to Jane Foster's.

But he seemed to change his mind as he looked at the fact that she was in physical agony; Tony Stark could be an ass, he was aware, but he wasn't a monster. He turned to Clint, using his paper work to gesture towards her.

"What's happening over here?" he asked, his usual sardonic voice still present despite his concern.

"Nothing," she blurted out, turning around to leave for the nearest bathroom. She attempted to maintain her businesslike and stoic tone as she stormed off down the hall.

"Don't you both have jobs…" she started to say, but couldn't finish. She quickened her pace as she finally made it to a bathroom, nearly falling in the doorway in her hurry to enter.

Flinging herself over a toilet, she got sick.

It took her about twenty minutes to regain her composure, to try and think of a logical explanation for why she'd run out like that, for why she was sick.

Food poisoning, that's what it was. She and Thor had discussed work the night before, and gotten bad Chinese or something.

She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, thankful she'd gotten a shower this morning and put on makeup. She looked more like herself at least, more so than when Tony had seen her the night before.

She pushed the bathroom door open, ready to walk to Nick Fury's office, when she was greeted by Tony Stark, waiting for her to come out.

"What do you want, Stark?" she inquired calmly, leaning in the doorway.

He bit his lower lip, looking at her, though his eyes weren't judgmental or playful like usual. He seemed curious, as if he was processing what was actually going on, no matter what Natasha would tell him.

"What?" she asked again, her brow furrowed slightly as she looked at him.

He sighed; almost annoyed with her disbelief that he could have figured her out.

He looked at Natasha again, tilting his head slightly as nodded towards the bathroom behind her. "Is that why you needed to speak to Thor?"


	7. Speculation

Natasha looked up at Tony with an arched brow, but an otherwise emotionless face.

"I don't know what you are talking about Stark," she said calmly.

"Really?" he asked incredulously, not buying her ignorance act for a moment. "So what did you need to talk to Thor about last night?"

She tensed slightly, though she tried to hide. "That's classified."

"Bullshit."

"It's nothing concerning you, Stark," she countered quickly, not wanting to get into a back and forth with him. That's how he would somehow get the truth out of her. "Believe it or not, SHIELD cuts you out of more than you would like to believe."

"Is that the case?" Tony inquired, completely unconvinced. Though his ego did seem a bit bruised, for which Natasha was happy.

She pushed by him and began to make her way towards Fury's office.

"So, where are you heading off to?" he asked, relentless in his search for the truth as he turned and walked beside her.

"Fury's office," she responded automatically, keeping her pace and her focus. Stark couldn't follow her forever, and soon enough someone would flatter him and catch his attention long enough for her to get away.

He was exhausting. Tony was a nice enough guy; she'd certainly seen him at his best with people. And perhaps even his initial interrogation of her had started out as genuine concern, only to be naturally warped by his ego into a challenge he needed to win.

Ridiculous. She didn't know how Pepper could cope with him for extended periods of time.

"For this confidential meeting, I presume?" he asked. Natasha could almost hear him rolling his eyes in his voice.

"Nothing gets by you," she mumbled out quickly, quickening her pace and managing to get a few good steps ahead of Stark.

"What are you going to tell him about getting sick this morning?"

Natasha should have ignored him. She should have kept walking and never turned back and looked at him. She felt her whole body tense as she stopped in her tracks.

He knew. He fucking knew and now he was going to rat her out. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she suddenly understood Tony figured her out, he'd read past her vague comments, her plan. He saw the intention behind her actions and was planning to crucify her for them by barring her from escaping.

For what gain? There was no benefit for Stark if Natasha stayed put, aside from being the subject of one of his snide remarks every now and again. Natasha did not understand calling her out like this.

She owed him two beatings now; one for Jane Foster and one for their current predicament.

She turned around, her lips attempting push out a witty comeback, something to throw him off and make him doubt his accusation. Even if she just mumbled out the story she'd planned about eating bad food, about how she'd needed Thor for as mission, that was all. There was nothing else going on besides the task at hand.

She wasn't pregnant, she wanted to proclaim, loudly. She wanted to laugh at him, roll her eyes and shrug it off as nothing but Tony's need for attention.

Instead she waited; she stood there and stared at him wide eyed and waited for the words to come out. But they never did; she remained still looking at him with parted lips, her eyes widening in panic as she couldn't talk herself out of it.

Tony nodded slowly. He'd won.

She slowly and tentatively walked back towards him. "Fine," she said calmly, trying to suppress the chaos of her mind and the swelling anger inside her at the cocky bastard who just had to win. She raised her brows in unspoken defeat and looked at him. "Let's say I did get sick. What does that prove?"

"It proves you shouldn't be going on a mission," he replied.

"It could be food poisoning," she shot back immediately, quickly becoming herself again. "Gone within twenty-four hours, give or take."

He was unimpressed with her answer.

"So, you two leaving my party together a little over a month ago, you looking for him last night and now getting sick this morning, those are all unrelated instances?"

She paused. "Yes."

"Great. Yeah, okay. Did I also hear you tell Clint a little something about giving Thor a ride to work this morning?"

She tensed, she could feel the beginnings of an eye twitch. "I'm surprised that even you don't have better things to do then interrogate me in the hall," she spat out.

Tony clearly didn't hear her; he was on a roll. "So, he's staying with you then? And that—that has nothing to do with this morning?"

She bit her lower lip; denial was the only saving grace that she had, that or challenging Stark further, which the competitive spirit in her wanted her to do. Besides, it would be the more logical approach, it was natural for Natasha to fight back.

If she just kept denying his accusations, or just stood there and took it, he would be proven true.

"I find the sudden interest in my constant whereabouts surprising," she stated automatically. "Any reason for that Stark?"

"I just observe," he said innocently enough, shrugging slightly as he looked at her. "And if I notice something useful, I store it away for later use."

Truthfully, the only reason he had even noticed her leaving with Thor the night of his gala was because he was mildly offended someone had left one of his parties early.

He'd never admit to it, but as grand as his ego was, it bruised like a peach.

He continued. "And your change of behavior lately is the one that is surprising. I never thought really thought you'd be inviting Thor over to your house, of all people."

"I wouldn't be fast to invite you over either," she said with a small, sardonic smile.

"I figured that," he admitted, not really bothered by her little jab. Natasha assumed he probably heard them a lot, what with his personality.

There was a pause between their back and forth. He seemed to lose his competitive edge slightly, his face became calmer and his voice lowered. "Natasha, listen," he began quietly. "No matter what an ass I'm being right now, if you do need anything, I'm here—"

"That's very kind of you, Stark," she said robotically, cutting him off as she felt her head start to ache. She was tired, she was done—she didn't need Stark's pity or concern. She was perfectly capable of handling this on her own. It bothered her that he wanted to help; it was noble, but Natasha had no time for it, for being an act of charity. She didn't need saving and she didn't his worry.

"Unfortunately, there is nothing happening with me that you need concern yourself with," she began, attempting to head towards Fury's office for what seemed like the hundredth time. "Besides, soon I'll be on assignment and out of the country. Your offering of hospitality isn't necessary."

This was exasperating, and Tony could only be challenging for so long before he begin to even grate his own nerves.

"Do you think they're not going to give you a physical or something before you leave, Natasha?" he asked, his tone rushed and matter of fact. "They're SHIELD. Like it or not, they're going to figure you out one way or another."

She pushed her tongue against the back of her teeth.

In her panic to conceal the child, Natasha had ignored the obvious fact that SHIELD would have given her a physical once she had gotten the assignment from Fury. She was built to kill, and any flaw inside the design would make her useless.

Once they found the baby, she would have never been permitted to go.

Natasha hated herself, this situation. The pregnancy was already beginning it's slow destruction of her duties at SHIELD, slowly plucking away her assets until she would be rendered completely useless. Her physical strengths would be gone in a matter of months, only to take months of time to gain back once the child was born. Even now, her ability to think clearly and hold the strings in any situation was weakened.

She hadn't even thought of how she would need to receive a physical examination. She was losing touch with who she was, who she was programmed to be.

She could feel herself, getting lost in chaos, falling stray from the path designed for her.

Natasha looked at Tony, trying her best to maintain her mask of indifference. "I am aware," she said, the sternness of her voice tainted with a wistfulness.

She couldn't admit Tony was right, she wouldn't. No one needed to know until it was too late. She needed time to think things through, to be logical. If she could just buy herself a few months, she would be fine. She would figure out what to do.

Natasha was good at getting out of a crunch, nothing would take that away from her.

She couldn't allow it.

"I don't see how that would matter. The stomach bug should be gone by then," she continued calmly, attempting to shrug it off.

He sighed.

She'd won for now.

"You keep telling yourself that," he said with a sigh. "But the offer still stands, if you need anything…let me know."

She turned and walked away from him, in the direction of Fury's office with no intention of going there. She needed to find solace, a way to lose herself, at least for awhile. She needed to think, she needed to plan.

Time was the one thing on Natasha's side. And she would use it to her advantage.

For now, she was still useful, she could still produce results. She would remain working until her pregnancy became evident.

Then she would have to think of something else to do, something else that would save her already faltering reputation.

It would just take time.

* * *

Tony hated losing.

And he hated losing more when he knew he was right.

And Natasha denying what was obvious to Tony drove him crazy. It was her pride, Tony knew. His pride had kept him from making intelligent choices and instead had led him to make stupid decisions. And Natasha's decision to hide her pregnancy definitely fell under stupid.

He wasn't exactly sure what to do with his conclusion; he didn't want to tell everyone else, it wasn't his place to do so.

But all be damned if Tony had a piece of information he couldn't share with at least one person. It wasn't that he meant to cause a big stir, most of the time. He just liked to keep people up to date with what was happening around them.

That and he did enjoy the sound of his own voice.

It had been a quiet day in the lab, what with Tony being wrapped up in his own thoughts and Bruce's natural inclination to not say anything to anyone…ever. Bruce had also busied himself with some menial task in order to further exclude himself from social conversation.

Even with Tony, Bruce liked to keep his words sparse. So Tony liked to keep things…interesting.

"So, Bruce," Tony said, leaning over a table slightly to speak with his friend. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

He could see how the word personal unnerved his friend slightly, who slumped his shoulders and turned around to greet him. "What could you need to know?" he said quietly, defeated already.

"You're what I would call a pretty observant guy," he offered him generously. "Wouldn't you consider yourself a pretty observant guy?"

"I….guess," Bruce said weakly. Tony then caught his friend trying to study him, to see if Tony had gotten a haircut or something that he had failed to notice.

Tony sighed. "Have you noticed anything unusual about Natasha?"

"Oh!" Bruce said, giving a small smile in relief. Then he shook his head, completely uninterested in discussing her. "I haven't, um, really noticed anything. We don't talk all that much, really—"

"Well, then let me fill you in," he said, with his usual dramatic flair. "You just have to promise that what I tell you never is repeated, understood?"

Bruce frowned somewhat. "Yeah, because I'm such an office gossip."

Tony smirked slightly at his remark, sighing as he looked at him. "I think that she's pregnant."

Bruce took a minute to digest the news before he instinctively laughed it off. "You're crazy, Tony. There is no way that is true—"

"I figured you'd react that way," he said, completely expectant of the reaction. "So I'm going to just put it out there, that I'm pretty sure Thor's the father."

Bruce completely stopped what he was doing and stared at Stark in utter disbelief. "You're crazy."

"I really wish I was lying," he said putting his hands in the air. "But it looks like Thor's staying with Natasha, she got sick this morning. And last night, she was running around looking for him for some confidential reasons," he listed, adding on quickly. "And she looked and sounded far from professional about the whole thing last night. It was a little off putting."

"Yeah, but Natasha and Thor?" Bruce challenged, clearly skeptical of the whole thing. "He's not…really her type."

"Well, she's not really his either," Tony argued with a shrug. "I mean, we've all met and endured Jane Foster."

They shared a mutual glower. "Good point," Bruce admitted with a nod, thinking how different Natasha was then the needy, self-deprecating Jane Foster.

"Very good point," he looked up at Tony. "Does Clint know?"

"I…would doubt it," Tony admitted as if it were obvious. "When I asked her about it, all she could do was deny it. So, I don't think she's all to open about it with anyone. Especially Barton."

"I could see why," Bruce agreed. He took a breath. "Damn. And you're sure? Like a hundred percent that she's pregnant?"

"Can any of us really believe anything fully?" he inquired, walking over to Bruce's work station. "But, I'm pretty confident. I really wouldn't be making such wild accusations unless I had a pretty solid case."

"You're not a complete idiot," Bruce agreed teasingly.

"Exactly," Tony said with a nod. "I have quite more than just a shred of evidence from the past twenty-four hours alone. Besides we saw them both leave my party together that one night—"

"Yeah," Bruce said automatically, stopping Tony from rehashing the fact that they'd left his party early for about the millionth time. "Maybe she is pregnant."

That was all Tony needed to hear. Besides, it was visibly obvious Bruce was getting bored. "And we're going to keep that little bit of information between us, right?" he asked.

Bruce nodded, not really listening. "Not a peep."


	8. Opinion

Natasha knew violence well.

It was in her blood, her brain. It was in every move she made, every look she gave to someone she had never met before. She could look at someone and figure out how to destroy them in seconds, figuring their weakest point at a glance.

Her work was violence, as was her life, her duty. She was designed to be an efficient assassin, knowing how to take down an opponent as quickly and effortlessly as possible. She was built to see every move before someone made it.

She understood acts of violence, they made sense to her. Essentially, she was a series of ruthless acts designed to kill, destroy.

She understood pain, she knew how to deal it out and she knew how to take it. She knew how to bottle it away and store it in the back of her brain.

It seemed natural that now, now that she was so broken and only a word or two away from being completely destroyed, she found herself in the SHIELD training room.

It was here she felt her most secure, surrounded by machines and weights and punching bags, all instruments she could use to build up her own strength, to become more efficient and powerful.

And no one would dare question her there, badger her with stupid questions about why she was behaving oddly or differently. There she was working, she would always be working.

Her target today was an older punching bag off in the corner of the training area. It was worn, the red fabric on it had begun to tear and pull, leaving the insides exposed.

She hated it. She thought it was disgusting to look at.

She loved to hit it.

A nice solid punch to the center of the bag. That was for Tony.

A high kick to the left corner. That was for the damn physical.

A lethal jab to the right. That was for her future, for the ruins that awaited her. Missing them was inevitable, and soon Natasha would be broken down beyond repair.

No one would have any need for her anymore. She would be useless, sitting and rusting and waiting for someone to put her out of her misery.

She slammed her fist into the punching bag one last time.

That one was pointless, it had no real target.

Except perhaps herself.

She dropped her fists, it didn't matter anyway.

Natasha had just run down here after her confrontation with Stark in the hall. She was still wearing her black skirt, her white button down shirt. The only thing she'd removed were her high heels, tossed carelessly off to the side as she tried to feel at home again.

She slumped against the wall behind her; she was tired, down but not out for the count. She kept reminding herself she'd gotten through worse scrapes than this and come out on top.

Natasha was calm and collected. It was how she worked best. The pregnancy would end her career soon enough, she couldn't allow it to further infiltrate her life and her decision making. She would remain as efficient as possible for as long as she could.

She would push herself to do so. There was no other option.

She turned her head slightly, she didn't know if he'd made a sound to attract her attention or if she just happened to turn her head just in time. But Thor had somehow entered her asylum, innocently enough not looking in her direction but just looking around, almost investigating where exactly he was.

His gaze then fell upon her, staring him down as she waited for an explanation.

"I…had nothing to do," he said softly, gesturing weakly towards the door like she could somehow see the world of SHIELD had little to offer him today.

She quirked a brow. "So you followed me down here?"

"No, actually, despite how it may look," he offered her with a weak smile. "I often find myself visiting this room as no one is usually here this hour. It's a nice break from…the chaos up there."

She twisted her mouth slightly as she looked at him, trying to figure him out without knowing him at all. Not in their situation.

Not when she would have to go home with him in a matter of hours. She should have just nodded and shut up, just let him be bored to tears and leave on his own.

Yet, there was something about Thor that pushed Natasha to inquire about him. He didn't fit a stereotype and his behavior was inconsistent.

"Why do you never go home?" she asked stoically, shrugging as if it were obvious. "If it's too chaotic here for you and all."

That sounded rude. She didn't care.

He didn't take offense with her inquiry. He merely raised his shoulders a touch and looking at her. "Asgard has little for me any longer."

She didn't want to understand, but it was clear.

"Loki," she said aloud, though whether it was to herself or to him, asserting what she knew, she wasn't sure.

She saw him smile wistfully, sadly as if the smile was only spurred by a bitter regret. "Yes," he continued. "I've been barred from seeing him as of late."

Natasha nodded slowly. She shouldn't have asked, but she felt an impulse.

She wanted to figure him out. It was in her nature. "Why?" she heard herself say.

Thor was getting wary to explain, she could tell by the way he tensed. "My father…sees Loki as a prisoner, and no more. Not any longer."

"Then why go back at all?" she asked, her tone matter of fact like she was hosting an interrogation. She was thankful for that, it masked the genuine curiosity she possessed about the man from another realm.

He sighed, almost as if his answer would make him seem stupid or naïve. "My hope," he began softly and slowly, as if searching for the perfect phrasing. "Is that…once my father passes on, and I am King of Asgard, I can—"

"—you can free him," she finished for him, looking up at him with curious eyes.

"My brother deserves the opportunity for freedom," he explained, almost getting excited as he spoke of him, his plan. "If I can get him out of there, things will slowly go back to the way they were. I can fix them."

Natasha should have crushed his idea. Every logical and rational impulse in her body told her to explain to Thor that would never happen, that Loki would never be the brother Thor so desperately wanted him to be. In the brief moments of interaction, she could tell Loki was coming from a place of pain.

She recognized it, she empathized with it. Loki's pain was deep rooted and there was nothing that could soothe his ache. His acts of violence were from a place of pain, but they were intentional. He hurt others to make himself hurt less. It was a flawed system, but it worked for the most part. Only acts of violence let him hide from the pain a little longer.

And she wanted to tell Thor that there was nothing that could alleviate Loki's strife and the hatred he held for his brother. She wanted to inform Thor there was nothing he could do for him, that his efforts to return Loki to his idea of "normalcy" were fruitless.

Instead she remained silent, her need to correct him had shifted into a need to shield him from the agonizing truth.

Thor's optimism was rare; no other human or person she know possessed it. Every other soul she had ever encountered, through work or meaningless interaction, she could tell had let their past jade them, warp their view of the world.

Yet no matter what life threw at Thor, he remained hopeful that life would improve. Life would be normal again.

And Natasha couldn't crush him, she couldn't destroy that part of him.

"Yeah," she said quietly after a long pause. "Seems…like a good idea."

He offered her a small smile, almost as if he understood that she was lying for his sake.

He nodded in her direction. "What are you doing down here?"

She looked towards her shoes, then towards the punching bag before turning back to him. She felt an inclination to be open and honest with him, to tell him the truth, which was that she was stressed and needed a release for her anger and anxiety. It was an odd inclination, one she blamed on the environment they were in.

He had been honest and open with her, it was human instinct to want to do the same.

But Natasha was good at denying her natural urges and her human inclinations. There was no reason to be personal with him, so she wouldn't be. It was simple, it was rational. She did not have time to become emotionally invested in him.

Her friends were few and far between. She wasn't constructed for friendship and companionship, and she certainly was not compatible with relying on people.

"I need to stay in top physical condition," she shot back automatically. "So it's good to spend time down here."

She sighed slightly, glancing at him. She shouldn't bond with him, she knew that. But she could be a touch more polite.

"And…," she began slowly, awkwardly as she attempted to be a touch more personal. "Stark was on my case. As per usual."

Thor didn't seem to surprised at the admission Stark had bothered her, though when he glanced at Natasha, he also wondered what trait of Natasha's Stark could have found fault with.

Unless she'd told him about the pregnancy. "Does he know?" he asked softly, after a momentary pause.

"He figured it out on his own," she replied stoically, her blood beginning to boil as she remembered the conversation from this morning. "He was badgering me about it this morning after he caught me getting sick. It was my fault—"

Thor seemed to take a mild offense with the idea that Stark would antagonize Natasha at all for something like this, especially after she had gotten sick. "What did he say to you?" he asked, a touch of urgency in his voice. He sounded slightly protective, like he would personally go and say something to Stark if he had offended her with his comments.

He knew Natasha had likely put Stark in his place, she was a more than competent agent whom Thor had seen work through incredibly delicate and meticulous situations with her words alone.

Yet she was still a lady, and she should be respected. Stark's arrogance had, on more than one occasion, proven to be a touch more than offensive.

"Nothing extraordinarily rude or out of line," she replied calmly, attempting to soothe him then so he wouldn't turn and inadvertently throttle Stark for her sake. It seemed to temporarily soothe him, though she wondered how he would react next time he was actually in the same room as Stark. "It was just Stark being his usual, arrogant self. Additionally, it was my sloppy handling of the pregnancy that led him to figure it out as well."

He nodded half-heartedly, almost as if he'd already set his mind on having a harsh word or two with the man.

She sighed. Thor clearly didn't understand that a pissed off Tony was more likely to tell her secret only out of spite. Thor also didn't need to stand up for her, she was perfectly capable of keeping Stark in line on her own. She didn't need Thor to back her up. She closed her eyes, annoyed she even had to say this to him. "Please don't go and cause a big thing with Stark."

"I will not," he agreed reluctantly after a long pause to think about it and all the repercussions if he did say something.

"Good," she spat out, walking over and putting her shoes back on. "Your intervention is unnecessary anyway. I'm perfectly capable of handling Stark or any other idiot on my own. I've been trained to handle people. I've got this."

"My only qualm was if he treated you with any disrespect," Thor explained. "I am aware you could handle yourself with Stark, believe me."

She pulled her heels back on, done with the conversation. She needed no respect from anyone, because in the end she always got what she wanted and she always came out on top.

"Also, the plans to leave town have been shut down," she stated, void of any urgency or emotion her plans had been dismantled.

"Then what is the new course of action?"

"I will remain an agent here for as long as I can before the pregnancy becomes obvious," she stated stoically. "For the mean time, we will keep the pregnancy a secret."

Thor sighed slightly, looking at her. "May I say something?"

She remained unmoved. "Not if it disagrees with anything I said."

"Then never mind," he replied, exasperated already with the whole thing.

"The baby will be fine," she informed him. "I know what I'm doing."

He said nothing, clearly still disagreeing with her and what she was saying.

Natasha knew she wasn't being fair to him, she barely let him say three words about what he wanted to do. But it was more efficient if she called the shots, if she made the decisions. His input would only complicate things more, inviting him into her life and her decisions. Yet still, she felt he deserved to say something, even if she only took it at face value and never applied it to her life. She sighed, closing her eyes and waiting for him.

"What do you have to say?"

Thor took a moment, trying to process what to say to her, to convey all he needed to without going on a tangent, boring her with his excess words or just failing to make a point.

"Natasha, I know not how you will react to being pregnant with my child," he said cautiously. "And…perhaps continuing your work as an agent would be dangerous for both of you."

She tensed at his words.

"I believe that you know what you are doing…about the things you are certain about," he continued. "But there is nothing set in stone about this, or the effects it could have on your personal well-being."

"I'm tough," she said with a shrug. "I'm Russian. I can handle it."

"It's not that I believe you cannot handle this," Thor explained. "You merely seem to not…have much concern for yourself, and I—"

"That shouldn't be your concern," she said back, her voice coming across as defensive and conveying her annoyance. What he said struck a chord in her. Her whole life, she'd been a part of a system, she had been a cog in the machine. Her personal life didn't matter, she was only supposed to get results.

And it hadn't bothered her. She always knew that if she died, it would be in the field. And she knew that she could be replaced. And for a long time, it hadn't bothered her, perhaps because it had never been said aloud, always implied.

Now Thor was acknowledging that part of her life, again unraveling who she was, who she was created to be. "There's nothing for me to worry about."

He sighed. "Natasha, I didn't want to fight you on any of this. I only meant to—"

She felt her cheeks become heated, and she knew her anger was becoming evident. "We are done with this conversation," she cut him off robotically. If looks could kill, Thor would be dead.

He didn't fight her on it.

"I'll see you at the end of the day," she repeated automatically before pushing by him and leaving the training room.

* * *

She kept her social contact to a minimum that day. She ignored Clint and Tony blatantly, she didn't want to answer the sea of inevitable questions about where she was, what was wrong.

Natasha attempted to work, but found herself unable to do so. Thor acknowledging what she knew to be true, that she gave herself no real concern, prevented her from being as efficient as she normally was. She felt no motivation to accomplish the simplest of tasks, her pain was failing to only strengthen her, make her more efficient. She was failing.

Instead her pain was fractured, open for the judgment of anyone who dared walk by and look at her.

It wasn't how she wanted to be seen, by her fellow employees or by anyone. Not how she wanted to be remembered by anyone.

So she went home. Her ride back with Thor was silent, she didn't want to talk to him. One wrong word from him and she could be pricked and spill over.

Natasha didn't want him to know anything about her, to see her at her weakest. She wanted to keep her distance, let him have her opinions of her and no real knowledge.

When she got home, she mumbled something about the baby making her sick and went straight to bed. He seemed to want to say something, but he didn't want to hurt her further, so he silently complied as she shut herself away in her bedroom.

Natasha fell in and out of sleep for about four hours. Her dreams had blended with her reality, creating a surreal confusion as she laid in bed, only knowing time was going by due to the sky getting darker.

Once the sun had set, she couldn't get back to sleep. She laid there for what felt like hours in the darkness, an overwhelming sense of futility and uselessness filling her being as she cuddled beneath her sheets.

She had spent her life being part of a greater cause, for bad and good. She'd been denied a true personality from her formative years. Her exhaustion and delirium from napping only made matters worse in her mind.

She felt somewhat lost, confused.

There was a gentle knock on the door. She looked at it for a long time, almost wondering who could be on the other side and what they wanted.

"Come in," she finally said, her voice soft and quiet.

Thor pushed the door open, and she felt herself tense slightly. "What?" she said with an irked brow, though she doubted he could see it in the dark. She could barely see him in the blackness, only his stature and the light from the hallway giving him away.

"Natasha, about earlier—"

"It's fine," she mumbled in reply. She didn't want to talk with him, not about this.

"No, it wasn't," he said. "My statements earlier today were unfounded. I mistook your empathy for others for apathy for yourself."

She didn't say anything, merely remained hidden in the dark.

"I understand, actually, why you do those things," he continued. "Despite my own stupid remarks that could make you believe the contrary. And I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry."

Natasha watched him in the darkness, realizing that Thor was quite possibly one of the few people truly empathetic to how she felt.

He'd sacrificed everything for his brother, despite Loki's attempts to push him away.

Thor felt lost, without a purpose, now that his brother was gone.

"It's all right," she said quietly, distantly, her tiredness hindering her from remaining completely removed. "I'm not mad at you, Thor."

There was a long pause between them. "And you're feeling all right?" he asked her. "Do you need anything?"

"No, I'm all right," she said, rolling onto her side. "Do you want dinner?"

"I made due," he said. "I didn't want to bother you."

She quirked a brow. "And no fires?" she asked sardonically.

He laughed quietly, looking down at the ground. "No fires. Though I went through the box of microwave popcorn until I really got it right," he admitted sheepishly.

"That's fine," she said with a small smile.

"Do you want something to eat?" Thor asked, though wasn't sure what use he could be in the kitchen.

"I'm all right," she said, rolling onto her back as she looked at his shadowy, tall figure in her doorway.

There was a pause. "Thank you."

"Of course," he said, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind him. "Goodnight."

"Night," she said quietly, though she knew she wouldn't fall asleep for awhile.

Her plan to completely cut Thor out of her life and never know him personally had crumbled completely. As much as she would have liked to deny any connection with the demigod, and continue to lead her life as planned, she realized that it was too late for that to be an option.

Denying the connection would only make it more awkward and strained. Yet accepting it wholly would only lead to chaos.

What she needed to do now was take it in doses. She could be cordial, they could share a connection, but she needed to keep him at a distance. It was the logical thing to do.

And for the first time in a long while, Natasha felt a bit less alone.


	9. Confrontation

* * *

"You told Steve?"

"One second," Tony called out, pulling his eyes away from a microscope and jotting something down on his phone. "Now, what were you blathering on about?" He said, lifting his head to take in the figure of his very—not angry, just disappointed friend. Steve had apparently divulged to Bruce what Tony had made them both swear to never divulge to anyone.

By the looks of Bruce, he didn't appear to be in a gaming mood.

"Oops," Tony said nonchalantly, looking back at his work.

Bruce let his shoulders drop as he looked at him, completely dismayed with Tony's behavior. Stark certainly, for what a good guy he could be, sure made some incredibly questionable decisions that Bruce would never fully understand. "Care to explain?" he asked with a sigh.

Tony looked up at him, completely unmoved. "What is this? Playing father now, are we, Bruce?"

Bruce sighed, giving up the power trip act and beginning to head back to his own station. "I just don't understand why you had to tell him, is all," he admitted in mild agitation, stepping behind his desk and opening his own work. "I mean, come on, Tony. This is Natasha's business. And you don't even know if it's true."

"Wrong," Tony said, looking up from his work for the third time. "Wrong on both counts. I, first of all, do happen to know this is true. And Steve had a right to know. He calls himself 'Captain'. Clearly, he thinks he's the authority figure of the team—"

"When really the go to guy is you, right?" Bruce asked sardonically, putting his glasses back on.

"Would you debate that?" Tony said, pushing himself away from his work and walking over to his friend. "Still, he should know about it, I thought."

"I don't think Natasha wants anyone to know," Bruce admitted with a nervous laugh. "And when she finds out you told Steve, she's going to be pissed."

"Hey," Tony said, mildly testily. "It's not like I'm running around telling every Tom, Dick and Harry Natasha's pregnant. I told the people who needed to know. If we get called in, we can't in all good conscience have a pregnant girl tagging along with us."

"That's…true," Bruce said, already tired of arguing with Stark. He'd just keep losing, so it's not like whatever Bruce said mattered.

"Exactly," he said with a shrug. "Besides, Steve's not going to run around waving his arms, proclaiming the news Natasha's got a bun in the oven—not just any bun either, Thor's bun."

Bruce looked at him, suddenly hit with a questioning thought. "You didn't tell Clint, did you?"

Tony let his nonchalant façade fall for a moment, suddenly seeming to have a heart. "Now that news delivery is certainly not my place."

Bruce seemed mildly relieved to hear that bit, at least.

"Still, Tony," he warned warily. "You have to be careful who you tell. I mean, I wouldn't put it past Steve to make a general comment about it in the presence of Barton, thinking he knows."

"No," Tony argued. "Steve knows who knows. And honestly, he knows who doesn't know. He'll keep it to himself."

"I don't know…"

"Bruce, seriously, nothing is going to happen," he said with an eye roll. "I mean, it's not like her stomach won't be giving her away soon enough."

"Yeah," Bruce agreed with a shrug, taking off his glasses again and running a hand through his hair. "But Tony, this really isn't your place to tell anybody. It's her fucking business. And if she doesn't want to tell anyone, let her stomach give her away."

Tony put up his hands in defense, backing away to his table. "All I'm saying is someone should be watching out for that kid," he began quickly, almost emotionally. "And her going on spy missions seems to go against that."

"It's seriously just something you need to let go," Bruce said simply. "I mean, let everyone else figure it out for themselves."

"Yeah," Tony said nonchalantly, going back to work. "Fine, fine…"

"You have to be discreet about that stuff," Bruce said, his eyes now glued to the equations in front of him. "You have to be careful with how you say it."

"Uh huh."

"I mean, you have to let Natasha tell people."

"Tell them what?"

Both Bruce and Tony looked up at the familiar figure of Clint, who was now looming in the doorway, listening intently to their conversation. Mention of Natasha seemed to have peaked his interest, as he surely noted the change in her behavior.

Tony turned from Clint to Bruce, feigning ignorance as he shrugged. "You want to handle this delicate matter, Brucey?"

Bruce was still staring at Clint.

"Bruce?" Tony inquired again with an arched brow, waiting for his friend to respond. His voice seemed to catch Bruce's attention, and he turned towards Tony with wide eyes. Tony indicated towards Clint. "You want to handle this?"

"I, um, well…um….just," he stammered out, searching for the right phrasing. "Natasha…just has a lot on her plate right now…"

Clint looked at him skeptically. "Care to elaborate?"

Tony leaned in slightly. "Yeah, do you, Bruce?"

Bruce didn't bode well under pressure. It usually resulted in a mess.

A big, green frustrated mess.

He glowered at Tony before looking down at his desk.

"Shit," he mumbled.

Tony decided at that moment to intervene. "It's not really our place to tell—"

"Why is that?" Clint asked.

Tony puffed out his cheeks and sighed, thinking of a good reason that Clint shouldn't know.

Clint looked at Bruce. "Is it because of Thor?"

There was a pause.

* * *

Natasha had busied herself with menial tasks throughout the day. She'd managed to actually find some mild enjoyment in the world of paper work at her desk, actually able to help a few fellow agents with research and prove herself useful.

She wasn't cut out for that work permanently by any stretch, but she could at least do it. And she was happy she had at least proven that it could be done.

Natasha had also avoided most social contact throughout the day. Thor had only come by to check on her once, an encounter which she had hastily ended. Thor checking up on her at home was one thing, but at work it was an out of character event that should not have happened at all.

It was mildly frustrating to say the least.

Natasha was walking down to drop something off at another agent's desk, when a familiar figure caught her eye, standing alone in an abandoned conference room, hunched over a table, agonizing over something.

She recognized Clint, almost immediately entering the room to see what the matter was.

"Clint," she said, her voice soft and worried, almost human as she entered the conference room. He was angry, frustrated, and her mind raced as she wondered what could be plaguing his mind. She could read him well, better than almost anyone she had ever come in contact with.

She cared about him, he'd been her better half for too long for her not to recognize when he wasn't himself.

He turned away from her without a glance, trying to hide his pain.

She looked at him, almost shocked by his behavior. Gently pushing on his arm, she turned him to face her. "What the hell's going on, Clint?"

He took a breath, a long pause as he seemed to debate what to say next. He was looking at her both angrily and sadly, confused. He didn't know how to react to her, like he was looking at someone he had never even spoken to before.

That was what hurt Natasha most of all, his look of confusion on his face as he gazed at her.

"What?" she asked again, tightening her grip on his arm, trying her best to stifle her own pain to figure out what had happened to him.

He sighed shakily, like he didn't want to be angry with her but couldn't help it. "When were you going to tell me?" he said icily.

She immediately tore away from his arm, trying to keep her gaze steady. "Tell you what—"

"You know what," he snapped back, though he'd lost some of the edge to his voice. Now he just sounded sadly dull, like he couldn't even bring himself to be emotional about it all. "The baby, Nat. The fucking baby."

She froze, standing there uselessly as he begin to back away.

Natasha had completely lost touch with the rational side of herself. All she could think of things to say that would make Clint understand.

That would make him stay.

He sighed bitterly, looking around the room to avoid asking the obvious. Finally his eyes settled on her, and he couldn't help but confirm what he already knew. "It's Thor's?"

"Yes," she answered as calmly as she could, but her simple one word reply was enough to make Clint's blood boil. She saw him clench his fists, the knuckles were white. His jaw tightened and cemented into a thin line, his mind was racing, she could tell by his wild eyes. He wouldn't do something stupid, no. She knew him well enough that he was not likely to fly off the handle, but still part of her worried that maybe he would.

He was coming from a place of pain, acts of violence alleviated the pain, even if only for awhile.

And for a split second, she wanted to tell him not to blame Thor, only for his own safety. He would see it as his fault, that he needed to take action against him for not only Natasha's sake, but his own. And it wasn't intelligent, logical. She could step back and realize that if Clint acted rashly, Thor would only react in return. And it wouldn't be pleasant. But she knew it wouldn't help, it would only make Clint angrier, hurt worse for her sake. She let the suggestion drop without a second thought.

He looked at her again, his expression strained. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

She tensed, the panic evident on her face as she wondered how he could have figured it out, who could have told him about it. Stark was the most likely candidate, though he could have told more people. How many people in the office knew about-?

Clint seemed to read her mind. "I figured it out for myself, put a couple things together. I'm not an idiot, believe it or not."

He had too; after just exchanging just a few words and silences with Bruce and Tony, he had come to the conclusion on his own. And when he presented this conclusion, Bruce and Tony's jumbled explanations only strengthened his belief.

"I can explain," she said, attempting to be calm and rational as she spoke, though her voice was tinted with fear that he wouldn't listen, a fear that she would leave him.

But he had had enough. He nodded at her. "It's fine, Natasha," he said hurriedly, turning to leave the room. He seemed reluctant to leave, to move forward or stay back. This wasn't anyone, this was Natasha. This was his…he couldn't just abandon her there, they were all the other had in the world.

But he couldn't stay; every urge in his body told him to leave. In a way, he almost wanted to hurt her as much as he wanted to spare her. He just wanted her to understand, though he knew that she did deep down.

Clint couldn't bear it, he couldn't bear looking at her and knowing…

"Clint, you have to listen to me—"

He turned back, cutting her off. He looked at her with a reluctant concern. There was nothing he could say right then that he wouldn't regret later; all he could do was just look at her, soothe his main concern. "You're all right?" he asked quickly in a breath, just trying to get out of there as quickly as possible.

She nodded, just trying to blow it off so she could explain. "Yes, Clint, but you—"

"That's all I needed to know," he said before leaving the room. Natasha had hurt him, and he hated himself for being angry. But he couldn't stay there. He couldn't let himself be around her knowing he was cross with her. He couldn't hurt her like that.

He couldn't hurt himself like that. His voice was removed, detached as he threw out something in the waste bin.

"Clint, talk to me," she demanded softly, but he'd already walked out the door.

Natasha hadn't cried in years. She knew she had the capability to cry, all humans did, but she thought she had forgotten how. But now, as she stood there alone in the middle of the room, she felt herself begin the process.

The swelling lump in her throat, the tears forming in her eyes. She refused to let the water escape, the little gasp that would indicate her broken heart.

"Clint," she called out again, though her confident voice was shaky, feeling tears begin to prick the back of her eyes as she tried her best to remain stoic and solemn.

But he was gone. She saw him disappear around the hall and then he was gone.

He had left, without a word. Without a goodbye.

She felt her breath become shaky, forced as she felt her heart pump a burst of cold blood through her body. There was so much she wanted to explain, so much she wanted him to understand that she couldn't find the courage to utter. Nothing she said would matter. He was hurt, jaded—her lies had only made it worse.

She gulped, feeling like she was swallowing the earth with her. She felt guilty, guilty for everything she'd done to Clint both unintentionally and intentionally. She remembered all he had ever told her, and she hated him and loved him for it at the same time.

For a brief second, Natasha wanted to follow him, to chase him down and hold him and tell him she was sorry. But apologies were useless, they were only meant for the party offering the apology to feel better. Besides, Clint likely knew she was sorry. He knew she probably never meant to hurt him and only meant to spare his feelings.

Clint understood her. The problem was that he was too hurt to care about what she had to say.

Natasha felt herself look down at her feet, pulling anxiously at her fingers with her sweaty palms as she remained alone in the conference room. She felt like a child who had been reprimanded for the first time, one of the first times she had ever felt like the loser.

She bit down on her tongue, trying to hold in the tears that threatened to expose themselves at any given moment. Agent Romanoff didn't cry, she never shed a tear.

That was why she mattered. That was what made her good.

She heard the door open, but didn't bother to look up from the ground to see if it was Barton. She knew better than that; he'd never check on her.

"Are you all right, Agent Romanoff?" she heard the unfamiliar voice ask, the voice likely belonging to a subordinate SHIELD agent Natasha had never personally interacted with but who recognized her.

She looked up, her eyes red and wet, but not a single tear had shed. No, Natasha didn't cry.

Agent Romanoff didn't cry. That's what made sense, it's what was right.

"Never better," she said robotically, her pained eyes on the closed door directly in front of her.


	10. Comfort

"Are you all right?"

Natasha glanced up at the demigod from her position on the couch, her knees tucked under her chin and a knit blanket tossed over her. Her eyes were unfocused, puzzled as she lazily pulled away from the television screen and settled her gaze on the tall figure in front of her. She had tried, throughout the day, to maintain the usual level of focus and intent she had in her eyes. She had so desperately wished to appear as herself, to look normal as she interacted with fellow agents throughout the day.

And instead, she had found her mind completely on Clint, on his whereabouts and feelings and ultimately abandoned the effort. Clint was essentially her better half, who she looked to for understanding and comfort. Clint was what had kept her humanity, given her another chance at life. She owed him everything she had, and yet now he would no longer speak to her.

And Natasha felt an emptiness that she could not shake. She had been built to never get attached, but she had never been taught how to heal. It was almost as if they expected her to be able to wipe her memory clean, like they had when they had taken her and reprogrammed her and made her their tool. But the truth was that she could never shake her past fully.

She could deny and repress, but to what avail?

Natasha had barely opened her mouth all day, unless her words had been proven necessary. Clint's ultimate abandonment had resonated with her, she felt his sudden absence and it hurt. It ached.

Natasha felt like a fragment of who she once was, just a piece of something else that now served no purpose.

Clint was gone, he'd been hurt. And there was nothing she could do to alleviate his pain.

She opened her mouth slowly, pulling her lips apart after they seemed to have been dried together. Her voice was scratchy, weak as she forced the words out.

"I'm fine," she sounded distant, like her voice had come from another realm.

Thor knelt beside her so that he was eye level with her. He didn't believe her, she could tell by the glint of concern in his eyes as he studied her and concluded her behavior was not as it usually was. Thor was one of few who truly empathized with her. He was one of two people who wanted to alleviate her pain, not hide from it or deny it, but take it away from her and make it his own; make her life easier for no other reason than he wanted to.

"Do you feel ill?" he asked gently, seeming to want to reach out and show her some sign of concern and mild affection but stopping himself, knowing it would only upset her further.

"No," she said icily, her eyes again on the television.

There was a long pause before she heard a sigh escape his lips. In her peripheral vision, she saw his head lower slightly in defeat before he lifted it again, his eyes falling on her.

"Natasha, I only wish to help—"

"You can't," she snapped back emotionlessly, reaching down for the remote control and changing the channel. Natasha saw no benefit in speaking, her words would only show her deep rooted pain to the world, no matter how well she could mask it as accepting indifference.

And Thor, who seemed to read her well enough as is, would only understand. She did not wished to be understood, not now. Not by him and about this.

Natasha was the one designed to read people but be a mystery herself. Thor's attention and desire to help her only made her bitter, angry, scared.

Without her assets, she was nothing.

She was a waste, a mistake. She was a glitch that needed repair, but no one would tend to her and make her right again.

Thor's assistance would just damage her further.

She sighed, keeping her eyes on the screen. Part of her just wanted to throw him out, to just tell him to get out and leave her be and allow her to consume her pain, to devour it by herself and make it nothing more than a memory. Let her heal.

He only would open the wounds. He would only make her pain worse, because he would acknowledge it and make it real.

Instead, she said nothing. And she didn't know why. She could feel the words bubbling up in her throat, pushing on her tongue and her lips and all she did was swallow them down.

Natasha frowned, unable to distinguish why she was unable to make him leave. True, they had a connection, but it was nothing she couldn't overcome.

He wasn't Clint, to put it simply.

But still, she wanted him to stay. And looking at him now, at how her harsh words seemed to affect him, she wanted to soothe his pain.

Perhaps he just gave her something to look after, like a cat; providing her companionship and feigned friendship in an otherwise lonely and isolated life.

"I'm sorry," she said stoically, nodding at him. "That was rude of me."

Thor didn't argue with her, but merely glanced up at her with almost a saddened understanding.

"Do you wish me gone, Natasha?" he asked simply.

His accusation caught her off guard. She furrowed her brow, almost shaking her head as she attempted to be rational. "I'm sorry, what—"

"I know my constant presence has not been an…easy adjustment for you," he explained. "And perhaps it would be better if I came down here less frequently—"

"No," she said, speaking from an impulse as opposed to her logic. "It's just…I don't mind you staying here, Thor."

She sighed, her frazzled mind and rushed thoughts proving difficult as she attempted to justify her admission as a logical decision, as the smart move.

But there was no reason for him to stay there, none that would help her maintain a distance in their relationship.

She was fragile. She wanted company, his company. It was that simple. She could defend it no other way.

"It's not you," she said quietly, shaking her head slightly in defeat as she slumped against the couch behind her. "Don't blame yourself for my mood."

She took a breath. "It's me. Nothing I can't handle."

Thor almost said something contrary to her point, but decided against it.

Natasha glanced at him, waiting for him to articulate the thought he clearly was holding back on. When he failed to speak, Natasha assumed it was because he could think of no reason to stay there.

Granted, she didn't mind the company, but perhaps it was for the best if he left. Natasha was never meant to play hostess, least of all to a demigod, and sooner or later her lack of humanity would shine through and she would break their connection anyway.

It was logical to remove him now before his feelings were hurt, and she lost him as an ally. She didn't wish to depend on him, but it gave her some comfort to know he was around.

She wished nothing from him, not real friendship, understanding nor least of all love. But having him there made her feel she had something else to focus on, like a pet she could use to alleviate her stress.

He strangely enough allowed her to dwell on her own thoughts a little less, as she could focus on him and worry not of her damned fate at SHIELD.

Even if it was just his physical being in her home, it made her feel good to know he was there, that she had him to house and tend to, allowing her to hide from her own pain for a bit longer.

It was a dependence, she realized with a sigh. She had begin to depend on Thor, even though it was nothing more than a dependence on his presence.

His threat of leaving stirred her, if only because now she would be left with her own pain, confusion; trapped alone with her thoughts and memories, her worries of her future with not only the child, but of her companionship with Clint.

"You needn't feel obligated to be here," she said calmly, hoping he would take the cue to leave. Natasha felt her stomach churn in self-loathing, hating the fact that she had become dependent on someone, least of all Thor. "I am more than capable of going through this alone. I've been through worse and come back better than before."

"Natasha, I feel no true obligation to be here," he said, slowly standing again. "You have made it abundantly clear that you believe you can make it through this on your own."

His words caught her interest. She quirked a brow as she looked at him, a relief over the fact that he challenged her. It gave her something to think about aside from how she now assumed she enjoyed company in her home. "I believe I can?"

Thor sighed. "Natasha, I by no means wish to quash your ability to take care of yourself. I've said this multiple times. It's just—"

She pushed herself off the couch, staring him down. "It's just what?"

There was a pause.

"I'm practically an invalid now?" she inquired calmly, folding her arms across her chest.

"No, Natasha," he said with a defeated sigh. "You must understand that I by no means consider you incapable. I just believe that perhaps since you are with child, my assistance would prove necessary as you certainly cannot maintain a life exactly as it was prior."

Natasha swallowed his words, giving them a careful nod before shrugging.

"You're wrong."

He rolled his eyes. "Because you've been in this exact position before, correct?"

"I've been through worse," she spat out, as if to brag if she had the care to. "I've gone into situations where it was me against fifty men equipped with weapons you couldn't even fathom while I was armed with nothing more than my mind."

She shrugged. "And I walked out the only survivor."

"Natasha," he said with a small sigh. "You are more than competent. You're strong, you're intelligent, and believe me when I say that you truly can handle most things on your own."

There was a pause.

"But no one can handle everything on their own," he said gently. "Especially something like this."

She shrugged nonchalantly, trying to stomach her agitation with him and his idea that she would somehow be unable to handle this without the presence of someone else.

While it angered her, it also ticked at her growing paranoia that she was becoming useless. They shared a connection, granted, and perhaps he could even see she was losing touch with herself, with what made her an asset.

She bit her lower lip, masking her own voice with a small grin. "Get a lot of Midgardians pregnant, Thor?"

He seemed to now be agitated with her.

"That is not what I meant," he said with a sigh.

"But you did mean that you believe I cannot handle this on my own," she said back robotically. "And that could not be further from the truth, I'll have you know."

He shrugged slightly, abandoning the attempt to prove his use around there. "Then perhaps I should go, if I truly am useless to you here."

She felt her mouth twitch, but she said nothing.

His voice became gentler as he looked at her, seeming to understand that he had in fact pricked a nerve within her. "I will still come to check up on you, the child," he said, his voice quieter. "But perhaps my constant presence is proving to be more of a hindrance than anything else. And this is your home, if you do not wish me to be here, say so."

Natasha felt herself tense at his words, her cheeks begin to flush with an anger directed not at him, but at herself. She knew she should tell him to leave, to go home and to return to his life on Asgard and pay her and the child no heed. She knew she could handle it; she knew that she could make due on her own and that everything could be fine, but she couldn't force herself to tell him to go.

She hated herself for it; there was no reason to have him there at all. They'd barely spoken since he began residing there, they knew practically nothing about each other yet she couldn't tell him to go.

She credited it to the change in her hormones, and nothing else. If she could survive Clint leaving, she could certainly cope with Thor leaving.

He was almost a stranger, one she only connected with out of convenience. And sooner or later the connection would fade, only be present in the most dire of situations.

And Natasha wondered for a moment if she wanted that to happen. She was better off alone, yes, but it hurt her to potentially lose another friend.

Another bond. She hated herself for thinking of it that way, that she could become accustomed to company.

He glanced at her tense expression, assuming her answer. "Do you want me to stay?"

She felt her breath quicken slightly as her jaw locked and she looked at him.

Natasha did not want to say anything, she didn't even want to look at him right now. Her nerves were shot, her body was tense and her heart was pounding. The pregnancy had already begin to take a toll on her emotions, clearly, as she could no longer mask them with the proficiency she once had. The last thing she needed was Thor around, who had already dissected her insides once, tearing out her pain and anger for the world to see.

She swallowed, thinking of Clint and how he had left, how she had hurt him and made him leave.

Natasha wasn't built for friendship.

"Yes," she said flatly, her eyes heated and focused.

He seemed surprised. "You do?"

"It's nothing personal," she stated emotionlessly, looking at him. "Your presence isn't a burden, it's a distraction, one that I welcome in the chaos that is now my life."

He looked at her for a long time, almost as if he did not know how to take her words, confused as to whether he should be insulted by her admission that he served no more purpose than a children's toy or saddened that he was relatively useless.

Perhaps he should feel relieved that he could at least remain around long enough to tend to his child or Natasha if the need presented itself.

When he failed to speak, Natasha decided to take the opportunity to further explain the situation. "Why are you with me now?"

He looked at her as if it was obvious.

"Exactly," she said stoically, reading the expression on his face. "We don't want to be in this situation, yet we remain here out of necessity. We cannot allow things to become personal because that will only lead to a problematic future."

He said nothing.

"It's just a few more months," she said, her voice still dry and calm. "And soon the baby will be born and it can return with you to Asgard. And we can both go our separate w—"

"You're wrong," he cut her off.

She frowned. "How am I wrong?"

He was insane if he thought she would follow him to Asgard. His life was not hers to share. They needed to depart, lead separate lives in order to prosper. She couldn't fathom what she had been wrong about.

"I do…care," he said quietly. "About you."

She watched him, not expecting the words and therefore not knowing what to do with herself, with her words, her body.

He saw her nearly stunned expression and decided to explain. "Natasha, I cannot state you mean nothing to me," he said. "Granted, I do not hold you in a romantic regard—which I see you are relieved about as I assumed you would be—but to say you are nothing more than a consequence of a stupid act is not true."

Natasha sighed, processing the words in her mind before reacting. His confession, while at first startling, soon proved to be an admission of him holding her in a respectful regard, something she could deal with. Still, she was not accustomed to people—with the exception of Clint—admitting they cared about her.

She was a tool, not something to be loved nor understood, yet Thor and Clint had clearly understood and empathized with her.

She nodded in Thor's direction. "I appreciate that," she said calmly, keeping her arms folded across her chest. "That will probably make you living here a lot more…tolerable."

"What more could you ask for in a distraction?" he asked with a small smile, though she could tell her remark from earlier had mildly offended him.

She wanted to apologize for it, but decided against it, for she could fathom no other reason as to why she kept him around.

No logical reason anyway.

She smirked slightly, shrugging at his remark as she walked into the kitchen, trying to figure out what to pull together for dinner.

* * *

She'd ordered out.

Natasha had wanted Chinese all day, been craving it for lack of a better word, and had decided ordering out would be the best way to satisfy that craving, as well as not have to deal with a huge mess in the kitchen.

They'd had a relatively quiet meal on her coffee table in front of the television, not really saying much aside from an occasional comment on the food or what was on the screen.

Their discussion earlier in the day had alleviated some of the perpetual tension constantly between them. They had almost mildly enjoyed the dinner, had it not been for the awkwardness and forcedness of their time together, still lingering in the air between them.

Once the dinner had mostly wrapped up, Natasha glanced at him with a curious eye. For once, she felt an impulse to ask Thor something without the worry it would make their situation worse.

She genuinely wanted to figure him out, to understand him. His responses as of late had a way of getting under her skin and making her emotional, and perhaps once she figured him out their conversations could become something she'd expect, grow used to and cease having emotional outbursts towards.

That is how she rationalized the action anyway.

"Do you like going home?" she asked him outright, during one of the silent periods between their comments.

He took a moment to think about his answer before he spoke. "Yes and no," he admitted with a small smile. "Why do you ask?"

"Simply gathering information," she replied automatically.

He nodded as if he expected it, taking the moment to elaborate on his answer. "It is nice to see my friends, family…" his voice trailed off, his eyes slightly distant as the word stuck in the room.

She nodded. It had been the reaction she expected.

"Your brother," she replied.

"Yes, Loki," Thor stated, his voice much quieter and wistful as he talked about his brother. "His fate is not truly unjust, yet…I know that had it not been for me, for my stupidity, Loki would not have to bear this burden."

Despite her hope she would remain removed from the conversation, Natasha could not help but chime in.

"He made his own choices," she said. "He knows the difference between right and wrong."

"Yes, but which right and which wrong?" Thor argued softly. "I am the one who instilled in him his beliefs that power and fear went hand in hand as the right thought, that to be king one had to be rash and impulsive. It is from me Loki learned that violence and force is the way to win wars, to win worlds. It is I that have damned him to an eternal imprisonment in the home we once shared as brothers."

He glanced at her stomach before looking in front of him again. "Loki is one of many who have had to suffer due to me, my stupidity."

Natasha watched him with a careful eye, forgetting for a moment she meant to interrogate him, his words instead striking a chord within her, memories of the conversation they had that night together flooding back to her.

Thor was in a constant state of pain, his entire being focused on protecting Loki, the earth, and now protecting her and the child as well. Everyone he believed he was responsible for.

Natasha empathized with his pain, similarly to the first night, only this time she refused to unmask her own pain. She refused to connect their problems, find too many similarities and mesh it together and create further confusion and ache

No, Natasha only understood the pain, nothing more than that.

Natasha was not one to make false promises, to coddle someone and pretend things would be all right, especially when a situation looked bleak.

She leaned in slightly, folding her arms on the table as she got closer to him.

"Don't," she said simply, quietly. "You did what you could—"

He glanced at her skeptically. "But it was too late—"

"No," she cut him off, now wondering if she was speaking to her own pain or his, or if she was using his own situation to mask her own discomfort with who she was, what she had done. "You tried, and you keep trying. That's what matters."

"Is it?" he inquired, though the question may have been rhetorical and he sought no real answer. "I would have thought you said results are what counted most."

She shrugged, sitting back slightly. "You can't attain results if you give up."

There was a long silence between them, but it was comfortable unlike the other silences. This time, it seemed that her words had meant something, had brought some further comfort to the situation they were in.

Thor finally spoke. "May I ask you something?"

Natasha took his plate and put it on top of hers, trying to clean up their dining area. "It would seem fair after I interrogated you," she said. "Sure."

He smirked slightly. "Why were you gathering information on me?"

She was going to admit to gathering information to use it later to distance herself from him if need be.

But she felt no need to remind him he was not truly welcomed, that he served as a distraction. That he was not welcome, that she didn't need or want him there. Loki served as a constant reminder of those things daily.

Why further isolate Thor?

She shrugged, the right corner of her mouth lifting slightly as she continued to clean around them. "I wanted to know."


	11. Work

"So, I'm being demoted?" Natasha asked from her desk, her head slightly bent to the side as she stared down Agent Maria Hill, who was standing awkwardly in her doorway.

"Not necessarily," Hill said, attempting to keep her voice as level as possible. "According to Fury, this is a temporary move—"

"How temporary?" Natasha asked, cutting her off and folding her hands on her desk. It seemed nothing in Natasha's life could be going consistently well for too long. It had been a week since her little discussion with Thor, when he had confessed he did care about her somewhat. And since that point, their living situation had become a touch more tolerable.

The tension between them had certainly died down from what it once was; and Natasha partially credited that to her pregnancy. The change in her hormonal balance was clearly a logical reasoning behind her growing casual attitude towards his presence in her home, her kitchen, meddling with the things she had lying about the house. Clearly, there were scientific reasons behind her change in attitude.

The other reason she believed she could better cope with Thor was because she seemed to acknowledge he was a nice distraction from the other troubles in her life, ranging from the pregnancy to the fact that Clint still refrained from speaking with her as freely and openly as he once had in the past. And what with Thor's daily misadventures with mortal technology, he was proving to be more than a sufficient distraction for her.

And with him to keep her busy at home, and her work to keep her busy during the day, Natasha seemed to be finally becoming a bit of her old self again.

Yet despite her best attempts to somehow put the chaos of her life into some type of order, a new obstacle was always present to try and quash her efforts. Natasha was not one to back down easily, and she was certainly always ready and willing to challenge anyone that opposed her, but what with both the physical and emotional tolls of carrying a child, Natasha was not feeling in quite tip top shape.

She was close, she had been trained to be as close to perfect as one could be. But still, she was human deep down, and with that she carried restraints and burdens no amount of training and remodeling her own being could shake.

That didn't stop her from trying, though. The less human she was, the better; and the better she was, the more useful she was.

The more useful she was, the less lost she felt.

Hill nodded knowingly. "A couple of months long," she offered sarcastically. "Fury said that after that, you'll be put on a specific re-training program before you'll be allowed to work again."

"So I'm going to have to go through rehabilitation after the kid is born?" Natasha asked with a quirked brow, attempting to remain professional and businesslike but finding it exceedingly difficult, especially with Hill standing there in her doorway as opposed to Fury, who had apparently lacked the courage to face her himself.

"In a sense, yes," Hill explained, though Natasha could tell she was feeling a bit edgy, what with Natasha's growing impatience and annoyance. She knew that even with a child, Natasha was likely one of the more deadly agents there, and it made her a touch anxious as she tried to tiptoe around the fact that quintessentially Natasha was getting demoted.

And Natasha was glad that, despite everyone's apparent knowledge of the baby, she could still hold some fear over them. She kept herself calm and serene on the outside, but on the inside she was a touch proud of herself. "But it's a new requirement for all agents to go through training again after becoming stagnant for a few months."

"And this whole becoming stagnant for a given period?" Natasha asked, tapping her fingers against the mahogany of her desk. "This would have everything to do with the baby, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would," Hill replied immediately.

"Why couldn't Fury come down here and tell me this himself?" she asked, mildly taken aback with how Fury had left delivering this news in the hands of a lesser agent. It made her question her own understanding of how worthy she was to the team.

Perhaps she had miscalculated what an asset she was. She felt herself straighten up in her chair, suddenly slightly uncomfortable in her office, in her own skin.

She wished she could talk to Clint about it, but only for a moment. Making wishes and hoping for better were attributes of children. Only with age did practicality set in and prove what a waste of time it all was.

It was childish, naïve, stupid.

"You know Fury is busy," she stated. "He doesn't have time to deal with something this simple and trivial. It's why he gave it to me."

Natasha's pride gave way to a slight anger, her entire position at SHIELD had been compromised because of something no one needed to know about, not for another few months. And it was likely the fault of Stark. Barton may have been mad at her but he wouldn't have thrown her under the bus.

He knew what the job meant to her; he knew the sense of purpose it gave her. She had been created for her work, without it he knew SHIELD would deem her useless, wouldn't even use her for scraps.

"What am I going to do instead?" she asked, her confident voice now slightly shaken, her eyes looking up at Hill with a gleam of panic.

She'd die before she gave up her work. She'd do anything to save her job—

"For now," Hill explained, lifting her head slightly as she looked down at Natasha. Her wavering confidence had given Hill a sense of shocked superiority. She relaxed her folded arms a touch, regaining the composure in her voice. "You shall be temporarily moved to research."

Natasha the lower corner of her eye began to twitch.

She wished she could have believed Hill had made the job switch up in some petty attempt to bother Natasha. But Hill was a good agent, she put her job first and foremost always, as did Natasha. She would not hinder the whole team for herself.

It was beyond her. And Natasha respected Hill for it.

"Who told you," she asked through clenched teeth, her voice a bit harsher than intended.

"I'm not at liberty to say, Agent Romanoff," Hill replied, her sense of confidence still ringing in her voice.

Natasha raised a brow, leaning over the desk slightly. "I'm pretty sure I could persuade you to tell me."

Hill seemed to be becoming uneasy again, yet tried to maintain her composure. "I very much doubt that, Agent Romanoff."

Natasha pushed herself up out of her chair and caught Hill flinch backwards towards the door. Immediately, Natasha knew she wouldn't have to get physical at all as long as she maintained her threatening position.

Hill was no fool, she knew Natasha was more than disgruntled with being demoted. All she had to do was play it up, make Hill believe her world was truly crumbling around her and she was a desperate woman who was acting irrationally.

Hill was eating it right up. Natasha smiled internally.

"Was it Stark?" Natasha demanded harshly, looking at Hill like a parent reprimanding a child for telling a lie.

"I can't tell you," Hill repeated with a final nod before backing out of her office. She looked down the hall before taking another step back. "I will be back later with files for you so you can begin your research assignment."

Natasha thought she caught Hill wearing a smug little grin as she grabbed onto her doorknob, looking back at her and quickly restoring her stoic face. Natasha was convinced Hill was enjoying this, reveling in the fact that, even just for a few months, she would be viewed as SHIELD's top female agent. Perhaps she had ratted out Natasha to Fury herself, having only heard Natasha might have been pregnant from that gossipy Stark.

Hill wouldn't be so petty. Natasha had likely just imagined the smirk, or perhaps was reading too deeply into it.

All she knew was Fury had sent a lackey to handle her and to demote her.

"Would you like this open or closed?"

"Close it," Natasha said flatly, her tone mildly bitter as Hill sauntered off down the hall, closing the door behind her.

The second the wood closed, Natasha felt a pricking in the back of her eyes as she stared at the small office walls around her.

Forgotten, taken care of. She no longer presented a problem to SHIELD. She had been handled without incident.

Her work could be compromised. She was expendable.

Natasha felt a tear slip past her fluttering lids; the hot, thin liquid falling down her cheek slowly until it dripped off her chin and splattered against the back of her hand.

Clint had been the first crack in her foundation. Losing him meant the loss of what essentially kept her emotions in tact. He had been all she poured her heart into, and then she'd betrayed him. She had driven him away.

Now losing her work…Natasha had no purpose. Without her job, her duties, what was she to the world? She had no other use. She had been stripped of almost all she'd ever thought and knew and made into this machine that knew how to do only one thing, and how to do that thing well.

She wasn't even worth saving now.

She felt another hot tear escape her other eye, though her face remained solemn as if it was set in stone.

Natasha was not one for hysterical behavior, she could barely remember how to cry.

The silent tears kept falling, trickling out slowly and one by one. Natasha couldn't understand the point of it all.

* * *

It hadn't been long before Hill had returned with a stack of files and cases Natasha was supposed to research—basically find out what the case was about, the parties involved, likely suspects and likely locations for these subjects to be hanging out in.

Hill placed the files on her desk, looking somewhat apologetic for the drastic change in Natasha's work. "Sorry," she said simply, standing over the desk for a long moment before speaking again.

"You'll get through these fast—"

"Thanks," Natasha said quickly, picking up a file and flipping through it while Hill stood there. Natasha kept her eyes downcast, on the off chance her eyes were red and puffy from her crying spell which had not been too long ago. Thankfully the tears had stopped falling shortly before Agent Hill had made her way in.

There was another long pause between them, and Natasha hoped Maria Hill would take the cue and get the hell out of her office.

It wasn't anything personal, but Natasha was humiliated that she had cried at all, even when no one had been around her. If Hill paid any heed to her tear stained face, she truly would find no reason to live.

"If you need any help—"

"I don't," Natasha spat out, her head flying upward as she glared at Hill. The woman had already robbed her of a vocation, a purpose. Natasha Romanoff would be damned if she offered her pity as recompense.

Hill seemed to understand, nodding slowly as she left the room, closing the door as it had been before and allowing Natasha to delve into her work in peace.

Reading through the case files was not exceedingly difficult. Most of the cases were about stolen property on a global scale-diamonds, experiments, the usual. And most of these things were stolen by the elite of the elite criminals who had managed to avoid arrest for years. Some of the names sounded familiar to Natasha, and she wondered if she knew them from working with SHIELD or from her life before.

It almost was mildly interesting, reading about these people and where they came from, what they stole and seemingly why they stole it. More often than not, they were using the stolen good as ransom to attain finances from the wealthy owner.

The only difficult part of the task was identifying where the criminals were so that SHIELD could either arrest or assassinate them. It was a hauntingly familiar job for Natasha. She wondered if this is the method that SHIELD had used to track her down.

She felt somewhat guilty, damning these people when she had been able to walk out alive, been given a second chance.

But it was what needed to be done, she continuously reminded herself. It was what needed to be done.

Her job was her duty. It was what was most important.

Natasha heard her office door slowly open, looking up from her work to see who could have entered. It was not every day someone would enter Natasha's office, especially if the door was closed. The only one who had that privilege was Clint. And for a brief moment, she wondered if it was he who was walking through the door.

It was Thor, whose appearance didn't necessarily surprise her either. "Hey," she said with a touch of uneasiness, making eye contact with him before looking back down at the case in front of her. Thor rarely visited her office, even within the past week, and it struck her odd.

"Everything okay?"

She didn't necessarily want him in her office; despite the fact that the entire SHIELD operative seemed to know she was pregnant, no one aside from a select few seemed to know who the father was. And she had hoped to keep it that way. Thor's presence in her office at odd hours of the day would only strengthen suspicion.

Though, what with Stark constantly running his mouth, she supposed it was only a matter of time.

"Yes, yes," he responded quickly, looking around her office. "I was just…"

She glanced up at him, clearly not amused. "…checking up on me?"

"Partially," he said, taking the seat across from her. "And I was somewhat bored downstairs."

She looked at him. "I'm not doing anything of interest up here, unfortunately for you. So I'm afraid you will have to find amusement elsewhere."

Natasha did not mind Thor's company, but she was not equipped to play hostess for him. She was decent enough at it when they were at her home, finding things to entertain him on the rare occasion he was bored, but at work it was different. Her work, her duties were not to be put aside for anyone or anything. Especially now, with her job, her future on the line, she could not afford to be distracted from her work. Already she had been demoted once due to her personal life, she was already hanging by a thread after one mistake.

Catering to Thor was not only stupid, it was detrimental.

Thor seemed to be staring at something on her face, as if she somehow looked different than before; his eyes seemed to go from confusion as to what had altered to a mild frustration when he realized what it was.

Natasha had been crying.

Thor had somehow thought in the past that there truly was no worldly creation that could draw forth a tear from Natasha Romanoff. He had somehow fooled himself into believing she was somewhat emotionally invincible. Naturally, Natasha was stronger than most, she had handled Tony's remarks in the past about her and her pregnancy with an indifferent confidence, refusing to demand respect from him. And Thor had been upset with Stark, but upon her wishes had not sought him out or encouraged him to stop the behavior.

But the fact that she now had shed tears, likely over something Stark had done or said, Thor felt inclined to defend her honor. It wasn't an isolated occasion where Stark had delighted in making Thor feel like an idiot.

Although Thor was more than confident in his ability to physically destroy Stark completely if he felt so inclined; so he just let the little mortal man have his laughs at his expense.

But not at Natasha's. She deserved respect, even if she did not demand it verbally.

"Natasha," he asked, seeming dubious of his own claim. "Have you been crying?"

She bit her tongue, closing her eyes as her head tilted forward in defeat. Of all people she should have hidden her face from, Clint and Thor should have been the obvious choices.

"No," she repeated stoically, though both she and Thor knew it was a lie, a thinly veiled lie at that. She didn't want to discuss it in any further detail than that; she didn't even want to pry him further, inquiring why he would even ask such a question.

Because then he would only point out the physical changes on her face.

"Who has offended you?" he asked her, his voice a touch eager as he leaned forward slightly.

"No one," she said quickly and harshly, attempting to quash any desire he had to go out there and act on her behalf. There was nothing about her name worth defending, and Thor needn't waste his time and energy on Stark, Clint, anyone. Petty comments, especially about her, weren't worth it.

"We've been over this," she reminded him, her wide eyes focused on him as she refreshed his memory. "I don't want you butting into this. I'm perfect capable—"

"You do not deserve to be treated poorly, by anyone," he said earnestly. "Stark needs to show you respect—"

"I don't give a damn about Stark and his petty comments. The point—"

"So it was Stark?" he said, sitting back in the chair slightly, a look of mild triumph on his face.

She glowered at him. "The point is that feuding with Stark is illogical and fruitless. There is no point in challenging him on this, he'll just make things worse."

Thor paused for a moment, but did not seem to acknowledge defeat like he had the first time they had discussed Stark and his comments. "What did he say to you…if you would like to tell me."

"This isn't even about Stark," she said, looking back at her work, her saving grace. She had entertained Thor long enough; this should have been her focus. She had no time for him and his need to be her knight in shining armor. "It's likely just my hormones acting up. It's nothing."

She did not want to tell Thor what had drawn forth her tears. She did not want to tell him how defeated she felt, how useless and pointless her existence was becoming.

Natasha's burdens were her own. And Thor would only find a way to blame himself for her hand in life. He would try to make it better for her, defend her.

Natasha worked better alone.

"Then what is it?" he inquired gently. "You are not one to cry easily, Natasha, no matter what obstacles come your way in life. These tears could not have been easily provoked—"

His words caught her attention, and she looked at him. "Well, there's a first time for everything."

There was a momentary glare between them, and Natasha realized he was more relentless with this than in past scenarios. Perhaps his admission of caring about her made him stronger in his convictions to protect her.

But Natasha did not need protection. And he needed to understand that.

"Thor," she said, the harshness in her voice now a touch gentler. "It's nice that you want to stick up for me. But I don't need you to. I can take care of myself and I don't need you to shield me from anything. Not even Stark."

After a long moment, he agreed. "Fine," was all he said about the matter.

She quirked a brow. "Do you promise?"

He sighed.

"I promise to not initiate any unfounded debates with Stark," he spat back to her with a small shrug. "Or anyone else."

Natasha was in a hurry to get back to her work, feeling the pressures of an unfinished job pressing strongly against her, the weight of the world literally on her shoulders. She had wasted enough time on the issue with Thor. She nodded curtly at him before turning back to her files. "Good. I'm glad," she said as she turned the page, glancing at the mug shots of two criminals on the next page.

She began reading about their past crimes, when Thor interrupted.

"Do you enjoy this…research part of the job?" he inquired, though the expression on his face made it clear he knew not how anyone could enjoy this task.

She shrugged, lifting her eyes and looking at him. "A job is a job," she said automatically. But she could not completely contain her disdain for the work, despite her burning desire to plow through her work and prove she still was a competent agent. She reluctantly lifted her head to look at him as she spoke honestly and with little reserve. "But…this is certainly not my favourite task I've ever had."

Thor seemed relieved at her admission. "I can see why. Looking at pictures and reading…all that," he said, eying the tremendous pile of cases on her desk. He shook his head in an almost frightful disbelief. "What are you even reading about anyway?"

"Burglars, murderers, top notch thieves," she explained dully as he made his way to her side of the desk, standing behind her and looking over her shoulder. The work was tedious and complicated; a whole system of operations needed to take place for her to identify the criminal, tasks that she did not feel the need to explain to Thor, as it would only confuse him.

"Basically," she said, simplifying the whole matter. "I get information on thieves, I find out where they could potentially be hiding, and then we send SHIELD agents out to handle them."

There was a pause after her words.

To die for the past was a sensitive subject for both of them, and despite her best efforts, Natasha could not remain neutral and removed from the subject.

Natasha was embarrassed and ashamed to admit she was even taking part in such a task, having been at the other end of one of those orders. And she was embarrassed to have to admit it to Thor, who held her in a somewhat esteemed regard.

She looked at him, to try and read his reaction to her task.

To see if his opinion on her had changed, as she expected it would. Natasha had been correct in her past self-assessment; she did not deserve respect.

He did not seem happy with the task at hand, and as she had predicted, her words reminding him of his brother, trapped worlds away for similar reasons, his life practically over and with little Thor could do to alleviate his pain. His distant eyes scanned over the mug shots in front of her, almost as if he could see nothing but the humanity in their being, a sense of familiarity in their eyes.

"I can see why you're unhappy with the work," he said gently.

She sighed, looking back down at the men in their mug shots before closing the file. Thor's presence made her difficult job a thousand times more tedious and unbearable.

"Though I'm sure," he continued cautiously after a moment. "That some agents will make the right decisions when the time comes down to it."

"Not unless all the agents are Barton," she said dryly, folding her arms and sitting back in her chair. She sighed again, looking at the pile of work next to her.

A daunting task that needed to be accomplished, Natasha's work had no place for her personal input or beliefs. She needed to prove she was useful, not to be hampered by her own personal issues.

She felt Thor gently stroke her shoulder with his thumb, seeming to understand she was upset, though he probably did not fully know why.

Natasha had no energy or desire to swat him away this time, or to reprimand him for making personal physical contact with her.

"Thanks," she said simply.

He knelt down beside her, opening the file and scanning through it again, continuing to stroke her shoulder. "Is there…anything I can do that you believe would make this task less…trying?"

She smiled slightly. "This task involves mortal maps and a bunch of other complicated little procedures that I even find somewhat difficult. I don't think it's up your alley."

He laughed softly, nodding in agreement. "You would be right, then."

"Thank you for your offer," she said, leaning back over the file as he pulled his hand away. "I think I can handle it."

"Are you sure?" he asked with a touch of concerned suspicion.

"Yeah," she shrugged. "It could be worse."

Thor smiled slightly before getting up and leaving her to her work.

* * *

The task had been accomplished. It had been difficult, painful almost, but Natasha had completed the task at hand.

She would have been somewhat proud of herself if she hadn't been so exhausted.

Natasha made her way through the hallways of SHIELD, attempting to find Thor so that she could go home for the day and get a good night's sleep. Though the demigod was proving somewhat difficult to find; she didn't know where he had wandered off to after he had left her office.

She couldn't think of a single crevice in that building that would have kept his attention for all too long, let alone a single office where they would tolerate him for more than a few moments.

Part of her wished he'd remained with her in her office. She didn't mind him there, he was a bit of a distraction but he meant no harm in his being there.

For a split second, Natasha felt a slight animosity towards anyone that would belittle him within the walls of SHIELD.

A defensive behavior she killed within her almost instantaneously.

It was when she heard a muffled commotion coming from behind the closed door of a conference room that her heart seemingly skipped a beat.

No, she thought to herself. Please, no.

She tore open the door to the conference room where sure enough Thor was standing next to a knocked over chair, leaning over the conference table and staring down at a somewhat frightened yet still very smug Tony Stark, who remained in his seat and stared up at Thor with challenging eyes.

Bruce was over in the corner, running his hands through his hair and seeming to be counting backwards from ten.

No one seemed to notice her presence in the room.

"What are you gonna do?" Tony asked loudly, shrugging dramatically as he locked his gaze with Thor.

Thor laughed slightly, though their was a dark, ferociousness to it that Natasha found unfamiliar, surprising.

"Make a move, you pompous, old man—" he challenged him.

"Hey," Tony shouted, now too standing up, clearly offended at the old comment, Natasha assumed. "Any time, any place—"

"Guys!" Bruce called out softly, turning and finally noticing Natasha. Relief washed over him immediately when he saw her. He raised his hands towards the pair, like a defeated parent who had just given up with his two rowdy children.

"You shall present little challenge to me," Thor laughed, shaking his head dismissively at Tony.

"Oh, really? Becau—"

Natasha's fist made contact with Tony's face, sending him stumbling backwards. Thor seemed confused as to where she came from, seeming to materialize out of thin air.

Tony looked at her, horrified. "Can I ask what the hell was that for?"

She shrugged, explaining as if it were obvious. "You two needed to stop. You're an easier target."

Thor laughed slightly. She turned and glowered at him. "Not now," she warned before turning back to Tony.

He looked at her skeptically. "And I assume this has nothing personal attached to it?"

She raised her brow playfully. "Maybe a little."

Tony pointed an accusing finger at Thor. "Yeah, well…he started it."

"Lies," Thor shot back defensively. "You initiated this the moment you—"

"Doesn't matter," Natasha cut him off. She nodded in Bruce's direction. "Who started it?"

Bruce seemed to want to remain as distant from the feud as possible, and seemed annoyed when Natasha called on him for his input. "Hey," he said simply. "I don't want to get involved in all this—"

"Fine," Natasha spat out before turning to look at Tony and Thor again. "For the sake of SHIELD headquarters and both of your personal well being, can we agree this doesn't happen again and you two stop behaving like unruly children?"

"I will if he will," Tony said, still rubbing his reddened cheek.

Thor shot Tony the most scathing glance that Natasha had ever seen him give to anyone. "Agreed," he said flatly.

"Then I agree as well."

Natasha sighed. "Good then. Bruce, take your lesser half back to the lab, please?" she asked, watching as Bruce slowly talked Tony out of the room.

She turned to Thor, glancing at him with a combination of rage at his rash actions and some mild disappointment that he had broken the promise he made her.

"I thought you said no fights with Stark," she said icily.

Thor seemed to know this was coming, but refrained from apologizing. "That dispute was not unfounded," he said simply.

It was all he said on the manner, refusing to explain what offensive thing Stark had said.

In all likelihood, the comment was far from some of the more obnoxious and offensive things Stark said in the past. And Thor was already tense with the man, looking for an opportunity to finally put Stark in his place.

But she couldn't imagine Thor just jumped onto something to act. He had to have been mildly provoked.

Stark likely said something about Natasha, even just to Bruce, and Thor had overheard.

"Don't do that again," she said. "No matter what Stark says, or anyone says. I don't need a knight in shining armor."

"I know," he replied, his tone now apologetic as he looked at her. "I'm sorry."

Natasha could not be too mad with Thor, she had been yearning to punch Stark in the face as of late, so she could understand his desire to get a few good jabs in there.

But it couldn't happen again, Natasha needed no one to defend her.

"Stark had it coming," she said with a shrug. "Let's go home."


	12. Kindred

Over the next few weeks, Natasha's body began to pay the price of her pregnancy.

Despite the occasional spurt of morning sickness and her perpetual tiredness, Natasha had not seen much of a difference in her physical being up until the eighth week of the pregnancy had rolled around. Her clothes had been fitting fine, her appetite and diet had both been relatively normal, and now that she had been moved to exclusively research, her exhaustion even had seemed to dwindle somewhat.

And once Natasha had begin to gain her energy back, she focused on improving herself as an agent, to prove again why she was an asset to the operative. With each passing day she spent away from her work as a spy, Natasha felt an impending sense of doom towards her role at SHIELD, something she could not afford to lose.

No matter the work, Natasha needed to remain there. She needed to be used, like a tool. She had been designed for this work, and without it, she was of no use to the world, to anyone. Without her work, Natasha did not matter in the slightest. She did not want to feel that way, not when she could prove she still could get results, that nothing would hinder her performance within the walls of SHIELD.

She spent ten to twelve hours a day working on the research assignments, often without much of a break. She pushed herself to solve as many as she could a day, spending hours in front of computers and maps as she attempted to identify as many of the criminals as she could.

And when she wasn't doing that, she was trying to keep herself in top physical condition by spending multiple hours at the gym. She refused to allow herself to fall too far behind the other agents physically, despite not being able to be used in the field. She could train herself; she knew what to do and how to do it to stay in prime shape, she'd been trained to be an unfaltering weapon.

But soon, it became almost too much. Her morning sickness, which had seemed to lighten up in recent days, appeared to have come back in full force. And with a perpetual queasy feeling in her stomach, Natasha found it difficult to find much desire to eat.

Yet even so, her belly seemed to finally be expanding. Jeans that had once fit perfectly now were snug; none of her old shirts seemed to fit her body the correct way any longer. She attempted to layer her clothing, to try and somehow maintain her old appearance, some sense of familiarity with who she once was.

But it didn't look the same, nothing was the same.

Natasha was not accustomed to much change in herself. She'd been experimented on, wiped clean of a past, made into a seamless weapon, programmed to only kill and destroy.

Humanity was a privilege she had not been granted. Weakness meant certain death. She could not afford to ever have a moment of doubt, a slip up. She had been programmed to avert from such behavior.

Her work days became progressively slower, more strained. Her whole body had begin aching-her back especially. She could spend all day hunched over a desk without hurting her back, yet she could barely find the energy or desire to even attempt to go to the gym, to force her body into exercise and constant motion.

She had tried once; after work one night, she had made her way down to the training room to see what she could attempt successfully, keep herself fit and focused.

If she didn't have her work, she might as well have been dead.

This was the thought that spurred her to try, to keep pushing through the agonizing pain that seemed to be pulsing through her entire body.

If she was not the best, she had no point in living.

She had managed to get through some bits of the workout—she had been able to get in a few good jabs at the punching bag, a few solid kicks.

It was when she had attempted to run on the track she had found the difficulty. She had started off slow, a nice paced job she believed would help her maintain a steady pace. She could hear a rhythmic pattern developing each time her sneaker scraped against the track.

Her breathing quickened; she picked up her pace.

A quarter of the way around, and her legs had given out on her, unable to sustain the weight.

It had been more of a shock that she'd fallen than an actual feeling of pain. Natasha rarely fell, and she had certainly never fallen with such a simple exercise before. A feeling of failure, of certain death, now loomed over her as she laid there, trying to find the strength to stand, to get off the ground and prove she could do it.

She looked towards the ceiling, her eyes wide in horror as she tried to focus her breath, tried to understand how this had happened to her.

How could Natasha allow herself to fall so far, so quickly?

She'd been down on the floor for perhaps five or ten minutes before she found the strength to push herself up again and somehow managed to make it back to her office, pushing herself to make it through just a few more cases.

Natasha Romanoff had been designed to be used, she'd been designed to be a weapon.

She did not falter. She did not break.

She couldn't.

Yet she could feel everyone's pity towards her; they noticed she was changing. They could see the bags under her eyes, the slowness of her movements.

She could feel them watching her, judging her and then worse yet, feeling sorry for her. As if she could not handle the lot she'd been dealt.

At least they all knew better than to say something, to express their concern. Thinking it was one thing Natasha could at least ignore; having anyone verbalize their pity towards her was guaranteed to shatter her completely.

She would truly be lost, acknowledged as broken. And then what would they do with her? A broken machine set a bad example for the rest.

The only one who seemed to want to acknowledge her change at all was Thor. Perhaps he was more concerned with the well being of the child, or because he lived with her, but after two weeks of this behavior he felt the strong inclination to intervene.

He came to the doorway of her office, staring at her knowingly as she worked tirelessly behind her stacks of files. She watched him cautiously, ready to defend herself and her position.

Work was her priority, she could say.

The child would be fine, she would remind him.

He didn't need to worry—or perhaps he did; either way she did not want him to worry about her, to think about her. She was not his concern.

"What?" she said, after a momentary pause between them.

He sighed, walking into the office. "Natasha—"

"Don't," she cut him off coldly, pointing an accusing finger at him. "Don't you dare start—"

"You're not well," he argued earnestly, coming fully into her office and closing the door behind him. "You must believe me when I say this—"

"You don't know me," she responded icily, slapping another file open. "I'm fine. I can handle this, Thor."

He quirked a brow as he watched her work away, deciding to attempt to address the issue in perhaps a manner Natasha would understand, one she would listen to. Thor could no longer stand to watch her throw herself into work, to deny herself any relief or leisure because of her devotion to her work, to aiding everyone else.

Natasha deserved more than she credited herself with.

"Logically," he said, the word catching her immediate attention. He smirked slightly at her response, despite an effort to conceal it. "You do not have the strength to push yourself so hard as of late, Natasha. You need rest and time—"

"I don't," she responded quickly, glowering up at him with a combination of sadness and anger towards his inability to understand. Time was the enemy; the more time she spent on herself, the worse she and her situation would become. "I'm fine. The kid is going to be fine. I wouldn't be working if I felt like shit."

Her voice was cold, harsh; she just wanted him to leave her be.

Thor looked at her for a long moment before he spoke, his voice soft and sincere. "I don't believe that."

"Really?" she inquired, her voice hinted her annoyance but otherwise showed no emotion, sitting in her chair away from her work as she stared him down. "Elaborate on what makes you such an expert."

"I understand," he said softly, gently, attempting to try and relate to her on some level. "You are devoted to your work, to protecting your Earth no matter the cost. I know what it is like to…work at something, to want something so badly…it becomes your sole focus…"

Something about the growing emotion in his voice pricked at Natasha, and she immediately understood who he was talking about, what he wanted out of him. Who he wanted to protect.

Unwittingly, her expression softened as she looked at him. Something about Thor's pain she understood, she needed to fix. True, it reflected her own insecurities, her own desire and need to be used by SHIELD, to be seen as a force. But there was something lingering even behind that, some hurt or ache or pain that Natasha wanted to fix, wanted to comfort.

She couldn't identify specifically what it was, why it called to her. But it got under her skin, and she wanted to help him.

Her voice was barely audible as she looked at him, nodding slowly as if she was studying him. "I know you do," she said simply.

"But Natasha, do not throw yourself into neglect," he continued after a moment. "Your work is important, but…you are so much more than that."

She felt herself tense at his words, her breath quickened. Natasha felt herself slam against her own walls, screaming in her own mind that he didn't know her, he didn't understand she was no more than her work. Without it, she was good as dead.

"You're brilliant, your charming, you're..empathetic…"

All skills she had acquired for her work. Without her work she would possess none of those traits. She felt her hands grip onto her desk as an effort to keep her grounded.

He smiled slightly as he spoke to her. "You are a good pers—"

"Stop," she hissed, her eyes wide and her body trembling as she looked at him. Natasha could not allow him to say it, to make her out to be something she was not. Something she could never be.

Natasha could not allow him to give her a title she didn't deserve. He knew nothing of her past, of what she was created to be. She was a monster, a killer. She'd done more damage than good, and no amount of brownie points at SHIELD could change that.

She was not a good person, she never would be.

Natasha never could be. She was just a tool.

Her reaction seemed to surprise him, horrify him somewhat. Slowly, carefully, he walked over to her, kneeling beside her as he tried to figure out the best approach to make her feel better, to ease the suffering he had accidentally caused her.

Natasha couldn't take her eyes off of him, probably looking a little horrified herself. "You don't…I'm not a good person," she said quietly, shaking her head and closing her eyes.

She needed to get back to normal, to shake everything off and regain her composure, show how she was not bothered by his words.

"I'm sorry for that reaction, it's been—"

Thor did not seem to be paying her apology any heed, his main concern was her, not why she had acted differently; gently, he pried her hands from where they were gripping the desk, only holding one in his own. He looked her in the eyes, gently stroking the back of her hand.

"You are a good person, Natasha," he said again, sincere as he was the first time.

Natasha took a breath. Oddly enough, his touch did not send off alarms in her mind, she did not fear the repercussions of it for once.

And Natasha reminded herself that he was her distraction, something to keep her mind from focusing too much on herself. Logically, his touch was nothing more than a dog placing their paw on a person's lap.

He was her "friend", for lack of a better word. He was there to intentionally bring her comfort and companionship, Natasha justified the behavior that way.

Thor clearly had more value than a dog or cat; and Natasha understood him well and empathized with him, but he was certainly the role of comforting distraction.

Nothing more than that, or so she had convinced herself. She could not afford other options to be true. Thankfully, she was too exhausted to dwell to deeply on any potential underlying feelings she may or may not have developed, what intentions were truly lingering behind her seemingly harmless and logical actions.

She would play into her exhaustion as an excuse for her actions—or as logical reasoning, for it did make sense. Natasha could not detect the truth within herself.

She let her head fall against the back of her chair, watching him with tired, still analytical, eyes. He gently brushed some stray hairs from her cheek.

"You don't need to do that," she mumbled indifferently, though she made no move to stop him.

It was her exhaustion; that's what it was, all it was.

He drew his hand away. "My apologies," he said simply, letting go of her other hand. She hadn't realized he had still been holding it until he let it go.

There was a pause between them, an awkward silence that threatened to force them to reveal more about themselves, to forge a bond yet again.

Thor finally spoke, as if to save them both from themselves. "You need rest," he informed her gently.

Logistically, he was probably right; Natasha barely slept anymore and when she did, it was fragmented. Her work kept her awake, thoughts of her personal demise haunting her dreams and thoughts until it was too much to bear and she couldn't feign comfort anymore, settling instead to stare at her ceiling and organize her thoughts.

"Fine," she said, her voice calm and steady. "I'll sleep when I'm done this."

"This particular case?" Thor inquired as he looked at the file in front of her, finding fault in the vagueness of her words.

"When my work is finished," she said, her voice still business like.

Thor shook his head, smiling slightly. "Your work will never be truly finished, Natasha. I'm not that blind."

She shrugged. "Then we'll be here awhile."

"Just…for tonight," he bargained with her, desperate to get her home and to rest at least for the night. "Finish that one case, then you can come back tomorrow and finish the rest."

She looked at him skeptically. "Without interruption?"

Thor reluctantly agreed. "Yes, fine; I shall not interrupt you tomorrow."

"…will you interrupt me in the future with this problem?"

He was honest with her, finding no real reason to lie. "There is always a chance," he admitted.

Natasha had the odds against her; he was being logical and she was exhausted. There was no rational reason for her to continue working that night; besides, her work would only show her weakening. There would be no point to it.

She sighed. "Fine," Natasha said coolly, watching him as he slowly got to his feet. "But you can't make a habit out of it."

He nodded. "Would never think of it."

"Because I don't need you to watch out for me," she reminded him for the hundredth time. "I don't need anyone to."

Thor nodded again and left her office.

Natasha took a moment before delving into her work again, mulling instead over her claim that she needed no one. And how, the moment he had opened the door to leave, she had felt a regret in her choice of words, in her decision to push him away.

It had lasted a short moment, and soon she'd pushed it aside as just a consequence of her pregnancy.

Nothing more. She truly didn't care about pushing him away, it was a result of her hormonal imbalance.

No, Natasha Romanoff was not built for friendship.

* * *

"Are you sure you don't want more?"

Natasha glanced away from the television long enough to look at the pizza box in front of her, placed in the middle of the coffee table so that they could eat and watch television. Thor had been right; she was truly exhausted.

And the more time she spent on the case, the more time she spent in traffic driving them both home, her exhaustion became more unbearable. Once she had gotten home, she had barely possessed enough energy to order a pizza for dinner.

So naturally making dinner conversation was a feat she would not waste her energy on tonight. The television would have to suffice.

Even eating the pizza proved somewhat of a burden in Natasha's tired state. She managed to tear apart and swallow two pieces of the grease covered bread and cheese, the motions of her mouth getting slower with each bite, before she had decided she was tired of eating.

And the two pieces remaining in the box looked far from appetizing. Nor worth the effort of chewing.

"I'm good," she said, looking back a the television. "You can put them in the fridge."

Thor shut the box and took it into the kitchen. Natasha watched him go. For a moment, alone with her thoughts, she allowed her mind to wander freely, removing her perpetual veil of restrain from her thinking.

Allowing herself the luxury to draw emotional conclusions.

He was nice; though she knew he was nice from her distant observations, from reading and dissecting him like a dead frog under the scalpel, it was different to experience his niceness.

She found him pleasant, even for nothing more than a distraction. He was more than something to keep her occupied, she actually somewhat enjoyed his company.

Natasha felt a dull rebellion bubble inside her as she allowed herself for once to be emotional, to think fondly of someone in a less than professional way. She pondered on this new sense of rebellion, wondering where it was stemming from. She assumed the pregnancy was the culprit, her emotional responses were very nearly out of her control.

It would make sense, then, if they pushed her to want to be emotional. Their own rebellion against her.

She sighed. The pregnancy would be the death of her. Already, her decisions were falling away from her logical perspective turning towards her emotions. Already, this kid inside her was unearthing her feelings, digging up years of the past that decades of training had set to wipe from her being.

It had been about two months; in seven more months where would she be? What state of chaos would she be in?

Her work would fall victim to her growing empathy and emotion, she would fall victim.

She would be useless. Broken.

And it would be her own destruction. A sense of fear overcame her, fear of the unknown, of herself. She was the culprit behind her own demise, and there was little she could do to stop it.

Thor came back into the room, and regretfully she was comforted by his presence.

Natasha yearned to work alone, yet his presence made her feel a little less abandoned, a little less useless.

"Do you want to sit with me?" she offered quietly, anxiously. Her eyes were wide, a desperate need lingering behind her gaze.

Natasha wanted the companionship, she needed to know he still wanted her around-that he needed her around.

That someone still possessed some purpose for her; that she wasn't completely useless.

Seemingly a touch surprised at her invitation, Thor reluctantly took the seat beside her. She made no move to get closer to him, in fact she appeared to have no idea what to do with herself now that he was with her.

Natasha only sat there, her wide eyes now falling on the television again.

Thor watched her cautiously, trying to understand what was bothering her, what she would never admit to feeling. Perhaps if he could just understand, he could aid her.

"Do you feel all right?" he inquired.

"Yes," she lied, her voice a breath as she just stared ahead.

"Are you upset?"

"No," she said, her voice cracking as canned laughter came from the television.

Thor had enough of the game between them; it seemed every time Natasha attempted to connect with him, another human being, she stopped herself. Even if she needed the companionship, the bond between her fellow human, she would cut herself off in what seemed to be an attempt to protect herself from the world.

To protect the world from herself.

He reached over and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her into a gentle embrace, one she could easily push away from if she felt so inclined.

But surprisingly, she didn't; she made no effort to force him away and break the physical contact, as per norm. He only felt her head fall onto his shoulder, her hands tightly grip onto his arm.

It was a moment of weakness she wanted to regret, to have a logical explanation for, but at the moment her mind was blank, grateful.

She could justify it later, tomorrow.

Right now, she just held onto him as tightly as she could, holding onto the one thing she felt she mattered to anymore.

"Am I useless?" she asked softly.

He hugged her tighter, her head now resting against the crook of his neck. She wondered if by hugging her, he was attempting to calm his own sense of futility, his own sense of uselessness to his own brother.

"No," he breathed gently, rubbing her shoulder. "You are far from useless, Natasha Romanoff. You are more important than you realize."

Her grip on his arm never loosened; if anything it got tighter, her nails scraping against his skin. Natasha felt his understanding came from his own feelings of abandonment, of uselessness.

She wondered if anyone told him he was good enough, important. He put himself last, after everyone. And she wondered if he truly felt that way anymore, now that his own brother had fallen into darkness.

He did not deserve to feel that way.

"So are you," she said quietly, simply.


	13. Change

Natasha was good at rationalizing behavior.

She could identify the motivation behind almost any action, even the seemingly most uncontrolled. Everyone had a thought process, and almost everyone had a reason for why and how they did something. No matter how stupid the decision might have been in retrospect.

For instance, she had assumed the night before that she was useless. So she had latched onto Thor like a leech, attempting to suck every source of life he had out of him and feed her own insecurities. And her exhaustion and hormonal imbalance had only made the situation worse and made her more pathetic in her outreach.

Natasha wondered how to handle it with him; wondering if she should apologize for her behavior and attempt to explain it came from a place of emotion and desperation due to the pregnancy. That he shouldn't feel awkward about any of it. She could have done that with anyone who had been around at that moment, or so she believed. She had a moment of weakness, that was all.

...but that wasn't completely the truth either. Natasha did not open up easily, nor would she allow herself to have a moment of weakness around a stranger, someone she did not trust. She clearly felt comfortable enough around Thor that she could allow herself to even be a touch exposed.

And she had gone to him for comfort, a leisure she should have never attempted. It was how she had ended up pregnant in the first place.

Natasha needed to extra careful, especially what with her hormones hindering her ability to be logical. She would need to be more calculated, more meticulous in her actions.

For now, she could accept slipping up this once, as long as she refrained from allowing it to happen again.

Stupid decision, one that would likely incur multiple consequences, but it still had reasoning behind it. Natasha had been impulsive, but there was still a logical reasoning for why she had acted that way. She did not do it based on emotion, based on a personal liking of Thor.

Her actions had nothing to do with her personal relationship with the demigod, or so she concluded.

She laid in bed, mulling over the night before. She didn't even remember going to her room at all, let alone falling asleep. She could just remember the overwhelming fear that crept into her heart as she clutched onto his arm for dear life, for her life.

She had probably just passed out in her state of exhaustion, likely to have been carried to bed by Thor directly after.

Natasha wondered if he had checked on her, since she wouldn't snap at him for doing so this once.

Natasha found it interesting, and annoying, how he had taken such an interest in protecting her, and not only for the child's sake. Natasha, in all respects, seemed to have taken the place of Jane in his life. She was now the one he worried about, the one he could devote time and energy into.

She was the one he could over protect, as means to compensate for Loki, to ensure no one else ever would have to fall and hurt as long as Thor could protect them.

Though, Natasha was nothing like Jane. She was not one to swoon over Thor so easily, to giggle and revert to the age of twelve and blush every time he opened his mouth. And she was not one to flaunt her intelligence either, to chime in every time a conversation took place if only to have her piece.

On the other hand, Natasha was not nurturing like Jane. She wasn't designed to coddle Thor when he was down. She could empathize with him, she could express some mild understanding to his pain, but she could not promise him everything would be okay and hug him.

Natasha couldn't lie to him, to anyone like that.

She rolled onto her side, wondering how long the connection would last if Thor truly was just using her as a placeholder for Jane. Soon enough he would realize how calculated Natasha really was, how smart and efficient she was on her own.

Thor appreciated those things about her, but would that make him want to stay around her? She doubted it. Jane was the kind of woman he liked, the kind he wanted to build some type of relationship with.

Sooner or later, Natasha's connection with Thor would end. All they would share is a kid, nothing more. And Natasha could live with that; she was not meant for company after all.

She could live life on her own, it was what she had been programmed to do.

Despite this assertion, the dying humanity Natasha possessed felt uneasy about the whole thing, sad almost.

It didn't want Thor to go, to leave her despite the inevitable.

She gently stroked her stomach absent mindedly; it had now begin to push forward, the pregnancy finally starting to show the physical signs of its presence.

For the first time, it seemed, Natasha acknowledged the fact that there was a baby forming inside her.

She looked down at her stomach, running a hand lightly over her shirt. It scared her, to know something was living inside her. Natasha could handle almost anything life threw at her; she was trained to be the best, be emotionless, to be a machine programmed to kill.

How was she supposed to house a child for months, someone who couldn't even pinpoint a value on her own life? It was easy when she could call the pregnancy an inconvenience, a technical error that she could not even physically see. Then she could almost ignore it, deny it even.

She could focus on her work, her life, her only duty on the earth because she could pretend it did not even exist inside her.

And Natasha felt a little bad about that, but she had been made to fight, to work, to overcome any personal issue as it was trivial.

She sighed, looking ahead again.

"Sorry," she mumbled halfheartedly to whatever was growing inside her.

Natasha looked towards her alarm clock, seeing it was approaching near one in the afternoon. Her chance at making it to work seemed futile, yet it was Natasha's lack of worry concerned her. No matter how much energy she attempted to force into worrying about her job, about being discarded as useless, she couldn't find much to worry about.

Natasha knew they would take her back once the kid was born, especially because she was sending it to Asgard. She would return to work as her old self, her normal and functioning self.

Perhaps her mental breakdown had been somewhat beneficial, she could put things in perspective now.

Or perhaps for the mean time, she had found a role as Thor's caretaker. She had found a purpose in his presence in her home, in her life. She was responsible for him, for taking care of making him food and waking him up.

Natasha was responsible for his well being. And it gave her something else to dwell on, something else to do until SHIELD would take her back again.

She looked back at the clock.

And, as if one of Pavlov's dogs, the second she read the time her stomach started growling and whining for food.

She pushed herself out of bed, one hand still on her stomach as she stroked it gently.

* * *

"There's no food," Natasha said, slamming the refrigerator door shut as she looked at Thor, sitting at the dining table. He was rubbing his eyes sleepily, her commotion in the kitchen apparently loud enough to wake him.

He glanced at her as if she were mad, one hand still wiping away the sleep from his left eye. "You are mistaken," he informed her slowly, groggily.

"Nothing I want to eat," she said.

She heard him sigh heavily, pushing himself up from the table and walking into the kitchen to aid her. He started pulling cabinets open, looking at what could sustenance could be inside that Natasha would find somewhat appealing.

"There has to be something," he said, pulling out a box of cereal and pushing it towards her slightly. "This looks...somewhat appetizing..."

Natasha looked at the box, then at him. "Try again."

He sighed and shoved the box back into the cabinet.

They spent a few moments in silence, tearing apart Natasha's kitchen in the hopes of finding something for her to eat.

"Why do you own so much tea?" she heard him ask after a moment. She turned towards him from her lower cabinets. He was looking at her skeptically, holding at least five containers of tea in each hand.

She shrugged, as if it were obvious. "Tea is good."

"No wonder you don't have any food in here," she heard him mumble to himself, throwing the boxes of tea back into the cabinet.

"No one asked for your two cents," she chimed in emotionlessly, sniffing a rather expired item she had discovered.

"No one asked you to buy so much tea..."

Natasha looked up at him and quirked a brow. "You're not a happy person in the morning, are you?" she asked, her voice sounded as if she was conducting an interview.

Thor seemed somewhat apologetic for his behavior, his shoulders fell and he sighed. "Sorry," he said quietly, turning back to the cabinet.

"It's fine," she said after a moment. "I think it's somewhat humorous."

She watched him smirk slightly, continuing to dig through her cabinets.

"Glad you're amused," he chuckled slightly. He paused, glancing at her momentarily. "Do you enjoy the morning, Natasha?"

"I don't mind it," she said, closing the cabinet and sitting back against her stove. "It doesn't make much difference to me what time of day it is."

He glanced at her, almost like he was interviewing her now. "You don't prefer night over day, or vice versa?"

She shrugged. "Nope. Time really means little to me."

He nodded.

"What about you?" she asked.

She could find no logical means behind asking such a question, but just tossed it up to her old habits, interrogating someone until they gave away everything.

Though what she was to do with this information, she wasn't sure.

"Night," Thor spoke, looking rather disgusted at something Natasha had in her cabinet. He sighed. "I suppose that...in the evening, I spent most nights up, talking with my brother."

He offered her a bag of chips he found in the next cabinet. She shook her head and remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

"During the day, when I was awake for it," he said, continuing to look through the cabinet. "I was busy with my friends, boasting and attacking other lands we deemed inferior. We were ferocious, bold...no one dared challenge a one of us."

There was something sad, yet wistful about his tone that Natasha found interesting, complex.

"Then there were my duties that kept me occupied during the remainder of the day," he continued, giving up his search and leaning back against the counter. "So nights were solely spent on speaking with Loki, catching up with him, listening to him and ensuring he was all right. Though, perhaps in retrospect it still wasn't enough time to show him I truly did care about him."

Natasha shrugged. "He should have seen the effort you made."

Thor sat across from her on the floor. "It's not that simple, Natasha-you are sweet to say so, but it is not that simple. You see, if I had spent less time trying to capture everyone else's attention with my stupidity and brash actions, Loki would have been seen, noticed for his brilliance and-and his wit. He was more deserving of the attention than I was."

He sighed slightly, regret now overshadowing his face. "They only noticed me because I demanded attention. It was Loki who deserved the attention, and I took that away from him. And all I gave him in return was nights, when no one else would demand anything of me. It looks like, now that I'm speaking of it, I only appeared to give him attention when it was convenient for me-"

"You were both princes," she reminded him calmly. "He knew what your days were like. He should have understood you were just doing to best that you could. You can't keep blaming yourself."

"How can I not?" Thor asked gently, a bitter laugh escaping his lips. "Natasha, my whole life, I have made stupid decision after decision, all the while my father forgave me, gave me more chances than the next. Loki, who only attempted to gain my father's attention by behaving like me, is now damned to remain a prisoner in his father's house!"

Thor tilted his head back, looking at her. "All Loki ever wanted was to be noticed. And I couldn't even truly give him that."

"You gave him what you could," Natasha justified. "He knew the difference between right and wrong, Thor, but he continued with his actions. You can't blame yourself for his choices. You can't hold yourself accountable for the behavior of others."

Natasha kept her stare on him steady, her words pouring out without filter, no restraint. His pain was hers, his burdens were ones she understood too well, ones she could not fix in herself. "And you cannot try and fix things for everyone else, because of what happened with him."

Her words struck him, she saw him flinch and turn his eyes away from hers.

She continued to press though, almost as if she was speaking to herself. "I know what that's like," she said. "I'm the same way."

He looked up at her again.

She tensed, but she couldn't stop-she was like a broken bottle, once she was cracked, nothing could stop everything from spilling out into the open. "I know what it's like to want to fix your past by hiding in a new future. You're trying to fix things that can never be fixed, Thor. No amount of gold stars can change how you feel..."

Natasha swallowed. "But you're a good person-"

Thor laughed slightly, shaking his head. "No, I'm not," he stated openly. "I have failed too many people too many times, Natasha."

She kept her eye contact with him. "You're a good person to me."

There was a long moment of silence between them, but their gaze never faltered.

"Thank you, Natasha," he said after a moment.

She shrugged. "We're each allowed one mental break down. It's nothing."

Thor smiled slightly, looking at her. "We never got you something to eat."

Natasha quirked a brow, almost having completely forgetting about her roaring stomach. Her mouth was watering for something specific, something she clearly didn't possess.

After a moment, she realized what it was. "I'm in the mood for a milkshake," she said simply.

"Do you have th-"

"No," she said, cutting him off as she pushed herself off the ground, heading towards her purse to see how much money she had. "I'd have to go out and buy one."

He followed her out of the kitchen. "I can go find you one," he offered; Jane had sent him out a few times to pick up random items as she needed them; he figured he could identify somewhere selling milkshakes rather quickly.

Especially if Natasha was not feeling like going out; she should rest and take care of herself.

She shrugged, smiling slightly. "I think I can handle it," she reminded him, pulling her purse over her shoulder.

"Do you want to come?" she asked, looking towards him.

There was a moment between them.

"If you would like me to come," he said, his voice quiet. "I do not wish to bother you-"

"I'm not..." she sighed, taking a slow breath as she tried to remain polite. "I'm asking if you want to go. This has nothing to do with me wanting you there or not."

He laughed slightly. "But if I'm just going to pester you, there would be no point in me going."

"Well, it's also not good to stay in this house all day either," she said matter of factly. "You should be out doing things. It's better to be out and about, it helps keep your thoughts clear and focused."

Thor smiled crookedly. "So you would like me to come, in fact, you just are refraining from verbalizing the thought."

Natasha nodded, still removed emotionally. "More or less."

"That's kind of you to invite me."

"Like I said," she stated. "It's the logical thing to do."

"Whatever the case, I appreciate the invitation out," Thor said.

"Sure," she said with a small smile and a shrug, heading back into her room to find a sensible pair of shoes to wear for the car ride.

"Where are you thinking about going to eat?" he called after her.

"Um, a diner would be the likely place," she said, sitting on her bed as she scanned the room for shoes with the comfort of slippers in a somewhat stylish fashion. "I'm not ingesting anything from a fast food place."

There was a moment of silence between them.

"But, they're closer-"

"Nope," Natasha spat out automatically, going over the her closet.

"Fine, fine," he agreed. "I was only trying to tell you-"

"I am aware of what you were implying and I appreciate the concern," she said robotically, finding a pair of pale pink ballet slippers which she slid on her feet. "But I'd like to eat real food, if that's not a problem."

"It's not," he said, his voice getting louder as he walked towards her room. He stood in the doorway, watching her as she pulled her shoes on, wanting to say something but refraining from it. He looked bothered by his own thoughts, scared he would offend her in some way.

After waiting for a moment, and he still hadn't spoken, Natasha nodded in his direction. "You have something to say, spit it out."

Thor took a breath. "I believe perhaps...I should return to Asgard for a few days."

Natasha tensed, staring him down.

"Why now?" she asked urgently, though her urgency came from a place of selfishness.

He was leaving. Her distraction was leaving her, she tried to think as she watched him. But all she could call to her mind was that Thor was leaving her. He was moving away from Natasha.

She couldn't call him her distraction. She couldn't force the words to be spoken even in her mind.

It was Thor leaving. Nothing less.

Thor glanced at her, almost sheepishly. "Loki does need me, Natasha. No matter how much he may deny it-"

"Fine," Natasha cut him off robotically, keeping her eyes focused on him, the gaze steady. "That's fine."

"I'll be back soon," he promised quickly. "I'll leave in a few days, and will not be gone for more than-"

"Go now," she said with a forced, awkward shrug. "Then you can stay longer."

Thor knew he had offended her, despite his hopes that she would remain indifferent to his leaving. He had even thought she would prefer it. "Natasha, please; I do not wish to go for an ext-"

"It's nothing," she spat out emotionlessly. "I'm not going to be offended."

"Natasha, I don't want to go n-"

"What's keeping you here?" she spat at him. "What is the difference between leaving now or leaving in a few days?"

He watched her for a moment, his reason one he would not divulge to her. He seemed to distrust what her reaction would be.

She kept her face stern, set in stone. She didn't need him there, she didn't need anyone-yet Natasha couldn't let go of the fact that he was leaving.

Thor wanted to leave. He didn't need her, he couldn't be her focus.

And what really bothered Natasha was the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that Thor not only did not need her, he didn't want her.

She hated herself for staring at him and feeling that sense of abandonment, looking him and realizing that she wanted him to need and want her.

Natasha wanted him to want to be around her.

Natasha wanted him to like her; she felt her stomach churn in discontent with her own weakness.

"Just get out," she spat at him automatically. No hurt, no pain, all of her own feelings masked behind her lips, set in a firm line.

Her unwavering gaze kept focused.

Thor didn't move.

"I do not want to leave, Natasha," he said gently, as if reading her mind as she stood there.

Natasha sighed.

She had seen him as a friend, an ally; he knew what pain she had been through, he'd held her at the weakest she had been in years.

Yet he could just up and leave. She didn't matter to him at all.

And Natasha knew she shouldn't have cared what he thought about her, if he ever thought about her at all. Their relationship was one that should have never existed, forged out of necessity and circumstance.

It shouldn't have meant anything to her. She was stupid to look at him as comfort, to find him as her temporary distraction, her new purpose. Humanity was not something she should have tampered in, dependence was never something she should have looked towards.

People only let her down.

She took a breath, about to tell him to leave for the millionth time.

"Jus-"

"I don't want to leave you," he said quickly, bluntly. It was like if he didn't say it now, he would have never admitted it to her.

Natasha ran her tongue over her upper lip, keeping her gaze focused on him in an attempt to ignore her racing, nagging thoughts at his words.

"Then don't," she said with a shrug.

She didn't want him to go. She hated herself, loathed herself for feeling anything towards him.

Natasha should have told him to fuck off, to get out. She didn't care about him, she wasn't supposed to feel anything towards him.

Yet all she wanted to do was grab onto him, to keep him with her like a child holding onto a balloon. The desperation, the need made her uncomfortable in her own skin.

Thor smirked somewhat. "Am I that good of a distraction for you?"

Natasha's expression softened somewhat at his words, how he saw himself through her eyes.

"Yes," she lied.

Whether the lie was more directed towards him, or herself, Natasha wasn't sure.

Thor was a good distraction, that was why she kept him around. That was what Natasha had to tell herself anyway, her own masochistic way of keeping him around without ever truly having to acknowledge her feelings.

"Do you still wish to go out?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"No," Natasha said wistfully, confusion at her own mixture of feelings showing in her eyes.

He paused again. "Do you feel all right?"

"No," she admitted, but it wasn't with any ailment or problem Thor would understand, alleviate. She hated herself, she hated him for making her care about him. Yet all she could do was repeat, over and over in her mind, that he was just a distraction.

Just a distraction.

Nothing more to her.

It would become her mantra.

"What is it?"

She stared at him. "It's nothing," she said slowly, deliberately. What would she do if he left?

Natasha wondered if she would bounce back at all; she had somewhat crumbled at the mere idea of him leaving. What if she just woke up and he was gone one morning, back to Asgard for an uncertain amount of time.

Natasha could repress it-she knew what it was like to lose someone. She was good at masking her pain, playing it off as nothing.

But what would she do when she was alone, stuck in her apartment by herself for the first time in a few months? Could she deny herself memories and want in a building they had shared? Could she feign being all right with herself, look in the mirror and pretend that she was fine?

"You should go tonight," she said gently, looking up at him. "Loki needs you."

He seemed surprised by her rapid change in thought; Natasha couldn't blame him.

"Are...you sure?" he asked cautiously. "I do not have to-"

"You do," she reminded him, folding her arms protectively around her chest. "You go where you're needed. It's what good people do."

Natasha's words hurt them both, echoing through the silence between them.

"If that is what you wish," Thor said briskly before turning out of the room.

Natasha kept her arms crossed, her eyes downcast at her carpet.

Thor didn't need to be a part of her sick, twisted mind games. He already had his brother for that. He was better off without her.

Natasha should have expected this result.

* * *

"Natasha..."

Natasha, her eyes still closed in a state of being half asleep, barely responded to her name. She had taken something to help her sleep through the night; Thor had packed everything and was planning on leaving later that night. Natasha had watched him as she ate dinner.

And she remembered regretting telling him to go, but was unable to revoke her ever-changing-command of him.

She had turned in early, wary of staying awake and having to watch him walk through the door. If she awoke to find him completely gone, she hoped that perhaps she could pretend he had never been there at all.

The baby would be her constant company; she could forget about him, Loki, every trait he possessed that she found so compelling and interesting that made her grow a fondness for the demigod.

But even in her bed, in the darkness that consumed her room once she shut off her light, all she could do was lay awake and wait to hear the door open into her hallway, waiting for the night to swallow him up, take him away from her.

So she had taken something to help her sleep, to hide her from the heartache that was to inevitably follow the sound of the closing slab of wood in its little frame.

"Natasha," the voice was sharper, cutting, dragging her from her dreams into the blackness of reality.

Her wide eyes snapped open and she stared into the blackness of her room.

The door to her bedroom was open, the dimly lit hallway spilling it's somewhat orange glow into the room. Once her eyes had settled in the darkness, she could make out Thor, standing a little bit in her room.

"Shit," she said with a sigh, pushing herself into a sitting position.

"My apologies," he said gently, most of him still shielded in darkness. "I just-"

The good thing was, once Natasha was awake, she was wide awake.

"Good thing I realized it was you," she said, surprisingly emotionless for having just woken up. "I would have shot you otherwise."

"...that is good you realized it then," he said, a touch awkwardly.

"It wouldn't have been fatal," she informed him. "Just enough to buy me time to see whether you posed a threat or not."

"I thought you left," she said quickly, reaching clumsily for her alarm clock. "What time is it?"

"That was what I came to talk to you about," he said, walking over towards the bed and kneeling beside her. "I have been up, all night, thinking about what you said-"

"What time..." she repeated, looking at her alarm clock and seeing it was about four in the morning.

"After much thought, I have concluded that perhaps it is best if I remain here with you for a bit longer," he said, his tone somewhat excited to have drawn this conclusion. "Because..."

There was a pause in his words, and even in the dark, Natasha could see him trying to properly phrase what in truth, he was afraid to say.

"Because you think I need you?" she finished for him, waiting for his agreement.

"Yes," he confessed, as she had assumed. "But that is only part of it."

"What's the other part?" she asked with a quirked brow.

"It's nothing of importance now," he said gently.

"Did you get another human pregnant too?" she asked dryly, rolling onto her side to face him.

"No," he said with a small, somewhat insincere laugh. "It has nothing to do with any other woman."

"I don't mind you staying," she said, looking at where she thought he was in the darkness. For a moment, it felt as if Natasha was speaking to her imagination, a dream.

She had created Thor there in her room with her; he really wasn't staying at all. The real Thor had already gone for home, for his brother.

And in her state of drug induced exhaustion, she created a replacement.

Almost as if to test her theory, as if she believed she was right-he was no more than a figment of her imagination, she tentatively and slowly reached her hand outward, towards where she thought he was. Soon enough, her palm made contact with the rough stubble on his cheeks.

Natasha had been proven wrong; he had stayed with her. He was kneeling by her bedside. Though the intimate gesture bewildered her, fascinated her; it was one thing for her to have sex with him in the back of her car, it was another to just be touching his face, for no real reason than she wanted to.

It was a moment of intimacy Natasha had rarely experienced with anyone before, and it was something she could not easily pull away from. She stroked the skin on his cheek with her thumb, so lightly she wondered if Thor even felt it.

This was like an experiment for her. She just wondered what would happen with each new move, how long she could maintain the gesture.

"You're a good person," she said gently, her tone like she was speaking to a child, to a friend, so he would never know how important this gesture was to her, one that she would never allow herself in the light of day, when she could see his face.

Perhaps the darkness gave her the illusion it still was imaginary, despite her knowledge of the contrary. Natasha could mask the intimacy of her actions in night. She could be nothing more than the victim of the allure of the black night.

No one ever had to know why she acted this way. It was simple enough to blame it on the night.

She felt his cheek shift under her touch, her hand soon gently enclosed in his and returned to her bed. "I should not have woken you with the news, you would have found me on the sofa tomorrow when you woke. Do forgive me for this rude awakening. "

"But I likely would have shot you, since I thought you left," she replied stoically.

He chuckled slightly, resting his arms on the bed. "I suppose I would have deserved it. Technically, I would be a most unwelcome house guest after I promised to leave."

"Not most unwelcome," she said honestly. "That title belongs to Stark."

"Where does that leave me then?"

"You're welcome here," she said after a moment of thought.

There was a pause between them, a moment where saying nothing conveyed much more between them than they had hoped, and the darkness only made it worse.

"You should sleep," Thor forced from his lips awkwardly, beginning to push himself from the bed.

"Goodnight," she said stoically as he attempted to act as though he was straightening out the blankets; really, he was pulling them over her a bit more.

He sighed, staying by her bed and trying to say something to her. In the dim light from the hall, she saw him sit back slightly, running a hand through his hair anxiously, sighing, defeated yet again. She heard him begin to form sentences, but never get past the first syllable.

"What's wrong?" she asked, pushing herself up into a sitting position. She wondered if he had changed his mind, that he wanted to go back to Loki, and he only remained with her out of necessity.

"No, Natasha, sleep," he said gently, coming towards the bed again and trying to coax her into sleeping. "It is nothing but my own stupidity-"

"Tell me," she demanded, sitting up completely. She could tell he was close to her, even in the darkness. She could feel his breath gently hit her skin.

"I can't," Natasha heard him mutter, only to be followed by an attempt to pull away from her.

She felt his hand gently fall upon her side, an attempt she assumed was meant towards getting her to lay down again. But he never saw it through.

The darkness made for a timid boldness neither seemed able to shy away from.

Natasha leaned forward slightly until she felt his breath hit her cheek again. She could hide here, she could deny all she wanted to and repress everything in the light of day. But for now, in the safety of her friend the darkness, Natasha could give into her humanity, her overbearing sense of want and need that seemed to overshadow all her logical inclinations with Thor, without fear of judgment.

Without fear of rejection. Because in the darkness, what was real? If one couldn't see it, did it truly hold any value at all?

She lightly pressed her lips against his, holding them there until she felt him respond, kissing her back with a gentle tenderness; a bitter kiss that only seemed to get more passionate, harder, needier with each passing second until it was barely different from their first kiss that night in the bar.

Rough, sloppy, desperate; Natasha's fingers tangled in his hair, Thor's tightening grip on her side as they both desperately attempted to hold onto each other, to make the most of the blinding shield of blackest night that could allow them to be selfish, that could allow them to want without shame.

The emotional force behind their actions was the only difference from before; instead of pure need, there was a wanting as well that the darkness could let them ignore, deny for awhile.

Until the light of day would serve as a cruel and harsh reminder.


End file.
